Entered according to Act of Parliament by Andrew Chatto in the office of the Minister of Agriculture, in the year 1888. 609443 3o. S^.^iT GAZETTE PRINTING CO., MONTREAL. A BALLAD OF THE RHINE. •* Shoost look at dese shpoons und vatches. Shoost see dese diamont rings; Coom down und full your bockets, Und I'll giss you like avery dings." r INTRODUCTION. There is no one whom people wish out of the way more than some well-nieaning person who insists upon formally making them ac- quainted with a company of old friends, and is so full of his own performance that he won't see they are on hand-shaking terms already, and all they want is a chance to get at one another. Now if there is any one class of their authors whom the American people do know rather better than any other, it is the American humorists, from Washington Irving to Bill Nye, and we are not going to repeat their names here, or lecture upon their qualities. We have tried to arrange our Library so as to include passages representa- tive of every period and section, and we think that the chaotic order which we have chosen will be found to facilitate the course of those who like to come upon their favorite authors unexpect- edly. For example, the reader accustomed to the cheap artifices of other editors will be surprised to meet, first, a selection from the chief compiler' s own work, which he would naturally have expected to find in the small print of an appendix; but throughout, the com- piler has subordinated his diffidence as an author to his taste as an editor, and has put in a piece of his literature as often as he thought the public would stand it. We need not say that, if he could have had his way throughout, this Library would have consisted solely of extracts from his own books. But he was afraid the public would not stand it, not because it did not like his books, but because it had them all by heart already. For this reason, he has followed upon the first selection from himself with selections from Messrs. Warner, Aldrich and Burdette, and he has VU TrJ JJ JIT. IX .anal and indigeooas plant, the ooe thing rhi^T vfaaterer else mar be denied us; and . :Te$ an c\ chance for this We . . e bees election of authors, but here the mination cods, and the vbole American public is ;>d. It t* ^Qg to be a very disting-jished . cor bospEtable : . aboat it, wr sboold real.v be Tcrr sorrr if anr ooe of oar sixty millions rr. Th¥ Associate Editors. m viii INTRODUCTION. not hesitated in other places to intersperse extracts from Mark Twain, with episodes from Mr. Lowell, or Dr. Holmes, or Mr. Harris, or Mr. Cable, or others. This has the effect of bewilder- ing the reader, who thought it was going to be all Mark Twain, and perhaps of convincing him that there are other humorists besides his favorite author. Another advantage in the arrangement adopted, is that the reader will often be obliged to go through the whole book before he discovers that some favorite author is not in it; and by this time he will have been so much amused that he will have for- gotten all about his favorite author. We meant to put in every- body's favorite author, but the limits of the Library would not allow of this; and we had to be content with the hope that no one would finally remember their absence except the favorites them- selves. To these we would say, in the intimacy of a public adver- tisement, that they may confidently look to find themselves in a future work. They are no worse than many, perhaps most, of the authors here represented; in making this compilation we have exercised, not only the disorder of chaos, but the blindness of fate. Our work is not, however, a last judgment; and an appeal may be easily taken from it. In fact, it is not a judgment at all, but is a species of garden-party, where representative people from all epochs and parts of the country meet and say, " What! You here?" as people do when they had not expected to find one another in such good society. But we think the little entertain- ment is favorable to the enjoyment, and even the study, if you please, of the different kinds of American humor, from the days of Irving, when it still smacked of Goldsmith and Addison, onward. Smack of whom it would, it has always been so racy of the soil that the native flavor prevails throughout; and whether Yankee, Knickerbocker, Southern Californian, refined or broad, prose, verse or newspaper, it was and is always American. But it is interesting to compare the varieties and differences of the INTRODUCTION. Ix fruits of this perennial and indigenous plant, the one thing that we can certainly claim ours whatever else maybe denied us; and we think our garden-party gives an excellent chance for this We have been obliged to make a selection of authors, but here the work of discrimination ends, and the whole American public is cordially invited to attend. It is going to be a very distinguished affair, and, in our hospitable feeling about it, we should reallv be very sorry if any one of our sixty millions missed it. The Associate Editors. INDEX OF A UTHORS. Xlil Harris, Joel Chandler— page See Uncle Remus. Hay, John— Little Breeches 289 Harte, Bret— Plain Language from Truthful James 89 A Jersey Centenarian 352 A Sleeping-Car Experience , 642 The Society on the Stanislaus 679 Hooper, Johnson J.— Simon Suggs Gets a " Soft Snap " on His Daddy 598 HoLLEY, Marietta — (Josiah Allen's Wife) A Pleasure Exertion 327 Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell — A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters 406 The Deacon's Masterpiece 506 Howells, William D. — Trying to Understand a Woman 121 Love's Young Dream 292 Kitty Answers 303 Custom House Morals 433 At Niagara 495 Their First Quarrel 592 Irving, Washington — Rip Van Winkle 148 Johnston, Richard M. — The Expensive Treat of Col. Moses Grice 206 Kerr, Orpheus C.^ A Great Fit 567 Lanigan, Geo. T. The Villager and the Snake 15 The Ostrich and the Hen 164 The Fox and the Crow 227 The Kind-Hearted She-Elephant 401 The Centipede and the Barbaric Yak 537 The Grasshopper and the Ant 641 The Merchant of Venice, and the Good Samaritan 678 Leland, Charles G. — See Hans Breitmann. Lowell. James Russell — The Courtin' 100 Birdofredum Sawin after the War 427 Birdofredom Sawin as a Volunteer 584 xiv INDEX OF AUTHORS. Neal, Joseph C— page 'TisOnly my Husband 104 Newell, Robert H.— See Orpheus C. Kerr. Nye, Bill. — A Fatal Thirst 383 Phcenix, John.— Tushmaker's Toothpuller <. . . . 31 Illustrated Newspapers 178 Phoenix at Sea 359 Lectures on Astronomy 453 A New System of Grammar 498 John Phoenix Renders an Account of his Stewardship 525 Pistol Shooting 666 The Sewing Machine 675 Pratt, Mrs. Francis Lee. — Captain Ben's Choice 386 Shaw, Henry W. — See Josh Billings. Stedman, Edmund Clarence. — The Diamond Wedding 465 Shelton, Frederic W. — A Victim of Hospitality 362 Smith, Seba. — Jack Downing in Portland 185 Uncle Joshua Downing in Boston 519 Stockton, Frank R. — The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyke 258 Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher — The Parson's Horse Race , 315 Thompson, Mortimer N.— See DoESTicKS, Q. K. Philander. Thompson, W. Tappan— Christmas in PinevUle 571 Trowbridge, James T.— Darius Green and his Flying Machine 247 Twain, Mark.— The Jumping Frog , I The Tomb of Adam , 33 Abelard and Heloise 69 A Genuine Mexican Plug 82 A Day's Work ,. 116 INDEX OF A UTHORS. XV Twain, Mark — Continued. page Dick Baker's Cat 136 A Restless Night 142 A Dose of Pain Killer , i8g European Diet 229 Experience of the McWilliamses with Membraneous Croup 278 Nevada Nabobs in New York 349 The Siamese Twins 378 A Dog in Church 402 Blue-Jays 417 Our Italian Guide 474 Lost in the Snow 511 The Cayote 538 Col. Sellers at Home 611 Cannibalism in the Cars , 653 _ How I Edited an Agricultural Paper 697 Uncle Remus. — The Tar Baby 131 Mr. Rabbit Grossly Deceives Mr. Fox 690 Ward, Artemus.— A Visit to Brigham Young 93 Women's Rights 166 One of Mr. Ward's Business Letters 223 On "Forts." 225 Fourth of July Oration , 311 High-Handed Outrage at Utica 494 Artemus Ward and the Prince of Wales 579 Interview with Lincoln 627 Letters to his Wife 669 Warner, Charles Dudley. — A Fight with a Trout 9 Plumbers 256 The Garden and its Enemies 481 Boy the Destroyer 491 Brilliant Drunkards 583 How I Killed a Bear 633 Pie 662 Walker, Katherine Kent Childs. — The Total Depravity of Inanimate Things 435 Miscellaneous : — First-Class Snake Stories 60 A Quick Eye for Business 397 Little Charles and the Fruit 47 1 Butterwick's Little Gas Bill 664 INDEX OF TITLES. PAGE The Jumping Frog Mark Twain i-8 A fight with a Trout Charles Dudley Warner 9-i? The Villager and the Snake G. T. Lanigaii l^-i^ How We Astonished the Rivermouthians T. B. Aldrich 17-2& The Legend of Mimir Robert J. Burdette. . . 29-30 Tushmaker's ToothpuUer John Phoenix 31-33 The Tomb of Adam Mark Twain 33-35 Rev. Creamcheese, and the New Livery, etc. George Wm. Curtis.. 35-4S Game's Comedy W. L. Alden 48-52 To Correspondents Josh Billings 52-53 The Worst Man and the Stupidest Man in Turkey S. S. Cox 54-6o First-Class Snake Stories Anonymous 60-63 His First Day at Editing Eugene Field 64-68 Abelard and Heloise Mark Twain 69-74 A Family Horse F. W. Cozzens 74-82 A Genuine Mexican Plug Mark Twain 82-88 Plain Language from Truthful James Bret Harte 89-92 A Visit to Brigham Young .... Artemus Ward 93-9^ The Simple Story of George Washington Robert J. Burdette. . . 97-100 The Courtin' J- R. Lowell 100-104 'Tis Only my Husband J. C. Neal 104-116 A Day's Work Mark Twain 116-121 Trying to Understand a Woman W. D. Howells 121-126 The Female Base Ball Nine J. M. Bailey 126-129 The Robin and the Woodpecker. Ambrose Bierce 129-130 The Tar Baby Uncle Remus. ..... 131-135 Dick Baker's Cat Mark Twain 136-139 The Haunted Room R. J. Burdette 139-141 A Resdess Night Mark Twain 142-14S Rip Van Winkle Washington Irving . . . 148-164 The Ostrich and the Hen G. T. Lanigan 164-165 Women's Rights Artemus Ward 166-167 Nothing to Wear Wm. Allen Butler 168-177 Illustrated Newspapers John Phoenix 178-184 Jack Downing in Portland Seba Smith 1S5-188 A Dose of Pain Killer Mark Twain 189-192 xvi INDEX OF TITLES. Xvil PAGE Fables of the Hodja.. S. S. Cox 193-196 The Dog and the Bees Ambrose Bierce 196 Sicily Burns's Wedding Geo. W. Harris 197-203 The Ballad of the Rhine Hans Breitmann 204-205 The Expensive Treat of Col. Moses Grice . . . R. M. Johnston 2o5-222 One of Mr. Ward's Business Letters Artemus Ward 223-224 On " Forts " Artemus Ward 225-226 The Fox and the Crow G. T. Lanigan 227-228 European Diet Mark Twain . . 229-233 The Vacation of Mustapha R. J. Burdette. 234-238 The First Piano in a Mining Camp Sam Davis 239-246 Darius Green and his Flying Machine J. T. Trowbridge 247-255 Plumbers Charles Dudley Warner 256-257 The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Z^'/C'^.. Frank R. Stockton. . . 258-277 Experience of the McWilliamses with Mem- braneous Croup Mark Twain 278-284 Miss IMalony on the Chinese Question Mary Mapes Dodge . . 285-288 The Hodja's Donkey on his Veracity S. S. Cox 288 Little Breeches John Hay 289-291 Love's Young Dream \V. D. Howells 292-299 The Belle of Vallejo W. L. Alden 300-302 Kitty Answers W. D. Howells 3^3-3 10 Fourth of July Oration Artemus Ward 31 1-314 The Parson's Horse Race .Mrs. H. B. Stowe 315-323 Wrecked in Port R. J. Burdette 324-326 A Pleasure Exertion Marietta HoUey 327-338 The Ant and the Grain of Corn Ambrose Bierce 339-34° Frowenfeld's Clerk G. W. Cable 341-347 The ISIan and the Goose Ambrose Bierce 348 Nevada Nabobs in New York Mark Twain 349-35 1 A Jersey Centenarian Bret Harte 352-358 Phoenix at Sea John Phoenix 3S9-361 A Victim of Hospitality F. W. Shelton 362-366 The Donation Party R- J. Burdette 367-369 The Alligator Josh Billings 370 The Peterkins Decide to Learn the Languages. Lucretia P. Hale 371-377 The Siamese Twins Mark Twain . . 378-382 A Fatal Thirst Bill Nye.. 383-385 Captain Ben's Choice Mrs. Francis Lee Pratt 386-396 A Quick Eye for Business N. Y. World 397 The Owl Critic Jas. T. Fields 398-400 The Kind-Hearted She-Elephant G. T. Lanigan 401 A Dog in Church Mark Twain 402-405 A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters O. W. Holmes 406-413 Getting a Glass of Water F. W. Cozzens 414-416 Blue-Jays Mark Twain 417-421 XVlll INDEX OF TITLES. PAGE An Italian's View of a New England Winter. J. M. Bailey 422-424 The Nobleman and the Oyster Ambrose Bierce 425-426 Birdofredum Sawin After the War J- R. Lowell 427-432 Custom House Morals W. D. Howells 433-434 The Total Depravity of Inanimate Things .... Katherine Kent Childs Walker 435-446 Oon Criteek de Bernhardt Eugene Field 447-452 Lectures on Astronomy John Phoanix 453-464 The Diamond Wedding Edmund Clarence Stednian 465-470 Little Charles and the Fruit Chicago Tribune .... 471-473 Our Italian Guide . . Mark Twain ... 474-478 She Had to Take Her Things Along R. J. Burdette 479-480 The Garden and its Enemies Charles Dudley Warner 481-484 The Hodja Makes up his Mind to Marry S. S. Cox 484 The Old Settler Ed. Mott, X. Y. Smi. 485-490 Boy the Destroyer Charles Dudley Warner 491-492 The Type-Writer - R. J. Burdette 493 High-IIanded Outrage at Utica Artemus Ward 494 At Niagara W. D. Howells 495-497 A New System of Grammar John Phoenix 498-505 The Deacon's Masterpiece O. W. Holmes 506-5 10 Lost in the Snow Mark Twain 51 1-5 18 Uncle Joshua Downing in Boston Seba Smith 519-524 John Phcfinix Renders an Account of his Stew- ardship John Phoenix 525-529 Hans Breitmann's Party Hans Breitmann 530-531 A New Patent Medicine Operation Mortimer N. Thomp- son 532-536 The Centipede and the Barbaric Yak G. T. Lanigan 537 The Cayote Mark Twain 538-541 The Boy and the Tortoise Ambrose Bierce 542 The Friend of My Youth T. B. Aldrich 543-557 The Camel and the Zebra Ambrose Bierce 558 Success with Small Fruits R. J. Burdette 559-5^0 Natral and Unnatral Aristokrats Josh Billings 561-563 Examples of Turkish Justice S. S. Cox 564-566 A Great Fit Orpheus C. Kerr 567-570 Christmas at Pineville W. T. Thompson 571-578 Artemus Ward and the Prince of Wales Artemus Ward 579-582 BriUiant Drunkards Charles Dudley Warner 583 Birdofredom Sawin as a Volunteer J- R- Lowell 584-587 Train Manners R. J. Burdette 5S8-591 Their First Quarrel W. D. Howells 592-595 The Neat Person Josh Billings 596-597 INDEX OF TITLES. XIX PAGE Simon Suggs gets a "Soft Snap" on His Daddy Johnson J. Hooper. . . 598-610 Col. Sellers at Home Mark Twain 61 1-626 Interview with Lincoln Artemus Ward 627-63C The Alarmed Skipper J. T. Fields 631-632 How I Killed a Bear Charles Dudley Warner 633-640 The Grasshopper and the Ant G. T. I.anigan 641 A Sleeping-Car Experience Bret Harte 642-648 The Bumble Bee .Josh Billings 649-650 After the Funeral J. M. Bailey 65 1-652 Cannibalism on the Cars Mark Twain 653-66 1 Pie Charles Dudley Warner 662-663 Butterwick's Little Gas Bill. . . Anonymous 664-665 Pistol Shooting John Phoenix 666-668 Letters to his Wife Artemus Ward 669-674 The Sewing Machine John Phoenix 675-677 Merchant of Venice and Good Samaritan G. T. Lanigan 678 The Society on the Stanislaus. ... Bret Harte 679-680 Wliat He Wanted it For J. M. Bailey 681 Ants Josh Billings 682 The Romance of the Carpet R. J. Burdette 683-685 Mr. Simpkins's Downfall W. L. Alden 686-689 Mr. Rabbit Grossly Deceives Mr. Fox Uncle Remus 690-696 How I Edited an Agricultural Paper Mark Twain 697-702 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE A Ballad of the Rhine Frontispiece. He Couldn't Budge 6 He Belched Out a Double Handful of Shot 7 Luke lo Attacked by a Trout 14 (jOt 'em Again 16 Silas Trefethen • 18 Sailor Ben .... 21 The End of Bailey's Battery 26 Shake Yourself 29 Tushmaker's Toothpuller 32 The Grave of a Relative 34 Mrs. Crcesus 37 The Seed of the Church 39 The New Livery 44 Carrie's Comedy 50 The Worst Man in Turkey 55 A Novel Rattle 61 The Garter Snake, .. . . 62 His First Day at Editing 67 Heloise 71 A Good Horse 76 "Got the Heaves, 'Aint He?" 79 The Blind Staggers 81 In Suspense 83 Badly Mixed 84 Old Abe 86 Ah Sill 90 He Went for the Heathen Chinee , 91 Domestic Felicity 95 Clarence 98 The Courtin' 102 Only my Husband 105 Tommy Titcomb 112 Funny Joe Mungoozle 113 Tending to Business .. 117 Putting it in a New Light 118 The Porter 123 XX LIST OF ILLUSTRA TIONS. XX] PAGE Kitty 124 A Female Base Ball Club 127 The Robin and the Woodpecker 13c Uncle Remus 131 Brer Rabbit Caught 134 Shoving for Home 136 Going Up 137 Comfortably Settled 14c Humiliated 141 Practicing on a Mouse 143 Forty-Seven Miles 146 Nicholas Vedder , 152 Awaking from a Long Sleep 156 The Ostrich and the Hen 165 " A Feroshus Looking Critter" 166 Flora McFlimsey 169 Scolding in Vain 1 70 An Unprofitable Bargain 187 Making Things Lively 190 The Hodja Sneezing 194 Making it Warm 196 " Hey, George !" 199 An Exciting Ride 200 Colonel Grice gets Mad 220 A Genial Fellow 223 Playing Horse 226 The Crow and the Fox 227 A French Cook 230 "Two Dollahs " 234 He Smote Him , . . ... 237 Giving Them a Rattle 242 Gone ... 245 The Collapse of the Flying Machine 254 The Plumber 256 The Registrar of Woes 258 Harry Covare 260 The Port-Hole 27 1 Kindling the Fire 283 A New Kind of Croup 284 Fing Wing .... 285 The Victim 287 Little Breeches 290 The Artist 294 A Strange Disappearance 301 Kitty Glided Out of the Room 306 An Old-time Celebration 312 Sam Lawson 316 Cuff 319 Xxii LIST OF ILLUSTRA TIONS. PAGE Coming in Ahead 322 Revenge 325 Josiah 327 Griddle-Cakes 328 A Catastrophe 335 Is this Pleasure ? 337 The Ant and the Grain of Corn 339 Frowenfeld's Clerk 342 Just the Way he Felt 348 Colonel Jack Weakens , 351 Josiah W. Perkins , 352 Talkini^ Under Difficulties 354 "Tramp ! Tramp ! Tramp ! " 361 Keeping up a Fire 363 The Parson's Wife 367 A Taste for Young Darkies 370 The Lady from Philadelphia 374 Not Friendly 375 They Always Played Together 378 An Unfortunate Connection 381 A Taste for Needles 384 Mrs. Davids and Miss Tame , 386 Picking Raspberries 391 Teddy the Ferret 397 A Critic 399 Misplaced Kindness 401 Rev. Mr. Sprague 402 Diversion in Church 404 Old Joe 407 Puns with Blocks 4x0 Going to the Pump 414 Jim Baker 417 A Slippery Spot 422 The Nobleman and the Oyster 425 Timbertoes 431 Custom House Morals 433 A Last Effort 435 A Surprise 443 The Critics 448 The Astronomer 453 Mars and Venus 459 A Warm Reception 471 Thomas Tough 472 Is he Dead ? . ... 478 Her Bundle 480 My Summer in a Garden 482 The Fight 486 A Rise in Bear Meat 488 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. " xxili PAGE A Long Shot 490 Boy the Destroyer 491 An Outrage 494 At Niagara 495 Flat-Headed Indian 499 Phrenology 502 The End of the Shay , 509 Experimenting 514 Meeting an Old Friend 522 Gen. Coombs 523 The Editor's Chair 526 The Judge 528 Hans Breitmann's Party 530 A Patent Medicine 533 The Barbaric Yak and the Centipede 537 Respect to Relatives 540 The Boy and the Tortoise .... 542 Govei'nor Dorr . . 544 The Camel and the Zebra 558 The Sti-ength of a Banana Peel 559 A Natural Aristocrat 562 The Unfortunate Hunter 565 SteaKng a Goose 566 The Great Fit 567 The Remains 569 "Don't You Spit Agin the Jam." 571 The Christmas Bag 577 The Prince of Wales 579 A Brilliant Drunkard , . . 583 TheClog 589 Train Manners , 590 Tlreir First Quarrel , 593 Simon Suggs • 599 Simon Racing 600 What's this, Simon ? 602 Colonel Sellers at Home 614 General Boswell , 622 Office Seekers 628 The Alarmed Skipper 632 Going After the Gun 636 The Old Hunter 639 The Grasshopper and the Ant 641 An Interesting Story 644 A Flank Movement 649 The Colonel 651 Richard H. Gaston 655 Good Day, Sir , 660 A Little Gas Bill 664 XXIV LIST OF ILL USTRA TIONS. PAGE Fine Shooting 667 My Father and General Lafayette 671 Elevation of "Phoenix's Feline Attachment " 676 Brown 680 A Wifely Substitute 681 Ants 682 A Little More on the Other Side 684 An Alarming Discovery 688 Brer Rabbit's Horse 692 Brer Rabbit Outwits Mr. Buzzard 695 An Literesting Article 6q8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS* COUNTY. BY S. L. CLEMENS (MARK .TWAIN). OAMUEL L. CLEMENS (Mark Twain) was born at Hannibal, Mo., in 1835. and after serving an apprenticeship to the printing business in his brother's office there, " learned the river," as pilot. In this profession he bor- rowed the phrase which became his pseudonym from the river custom of cry- ing the soundings, "Mark one! Mark twain! Mark three!" etc. When piloting fell into the decay that overtook the whole commerce of the rivers, he went to Nevada, where he made his first attempts in journalism. He was after- wards connected with various newspapers in San Francisco, visited the Sand- wich Islands as correspondent of one of them, and, on his return, gave his first lecture. His earliest book, "The Innocents Abroad," was the result of his experience and observation as a passenger en the Quaker City in her famous cruise to the Holy Land. His succeeding books continue the story of his own life, with more or less fullness and exactness. After his return from Palestine, he was for a year in Buffalo, N. Y., but has ever since lived in Hartford, Conn. His books have been nearly all published by subscription, through different houses. In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to * Pronounced Ca-le-txx-ras. I 2 MARK' TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded. I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tran- quil countenance. He roused up and gave me good day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inqui- ries about a cherished companion of his boyhood, named Leoni- das W. Smiley — Rro. Leonidas W. Smiley — a young minister of the gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any- thing about this Rev. Leonidas IV. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him. Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monot- onous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle- flowing key to which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnest- ness and sincerity which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius va finesse. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once. " Rev. Leonidas W. H'm, Reverend Le — well, there was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49, or maybe it was the spring of '50 — I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other, is because I remember the big flume warn't finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiousest man about, always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. Any way that suited the other side would suit him — any way, just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready, and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to THE JUMPING FROG. J bet on it, and take ary side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken- fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here; and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him . to get to — to wherever he was going to; and if you took him up,^ he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico, but what he would find out where he was bound for, and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him — he'd bet any thing — the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was consid'able bet- ter— thank the Lord for his inf'nit mercy ! — and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Prov'dence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, befor'^ he thought, says, ' Well, I'll resk two-and-a- half she don't, an}^way.' ** Thish-yer Smiley had a mare — the boys called her the fifteen- minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than that — and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow, and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start, and then pass her under way ; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e racket with hei: coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose — and always fetch.' up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down. "And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he warn't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery, and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money 4 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. was up on him he was a different dog ; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo' castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces. And a dog mio-ht tackle him and bullyrag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andre^^ Jackson — which was the name of the pup — Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else— and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up ; and then all of a sudden he would grab the other dog jest by the j'int of his hind leg and freeze to it — not chaw, you understand, but only just grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in a cii*- cular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for puttmg up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight ; and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius — I know it, because he hadn't no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out. "Well, this-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom-cats and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for hini to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he ^/^ learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut — see him turn one summer- THE JUMPING FROG. c set, or maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything — and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor — Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog — and sing out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand ; and when it come to that. Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he laid over any frog that ever they see. " Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One. day a feller — a stranger in the camp, he was — come acrost him with his box, and says: " ' What might it be that you've got in the box ? ' " And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, ' It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't — it's only just a frog.' " And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, ' H'm — so 'tis. Well, what's he good for ? ' "'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing, I should judge — he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.' " The feller took the box again, and took another long, particu- lar look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate,. 'Well,' he says, 'I don't see no p'inis about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.' ■> "'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand .«!* I MAUK 1 LUC *r < to; ui«, uu TaOsio aboct vanD ' hair I .e£ia rnaa _.^ iM- f ¥\ ' rv* » < itf < r ■ #f K « «# t W^ « w V«^ # • a & It l> y got the hm erf her. . the nae of the i apor tays h as be got on tbr otbrr i e!" II. . from hc hoinrLiI to wr* t n c i^ ^ (^^. ^A in 1829. train- 4 •!<«li! Trout-. pastime than a is, i' trout is a retiring anu n^,.. and forced into a combat; au. vindictiveness become apparent, cellent pictures representing men in . icn assaults of long-enraged trout flying a them air with open mouth, ever ventures w liis re lakes of the forest without a certain h /NG FROG. 7 touched up the frogs from blind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan'l give a he.e, and hysted up his shoulderu — so — like a Frenchman, buit warn't no use — he couldn't budge ; he was planted as s< d as a church, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was arhored out. Smiley was a deal surprised, and he was dis- gusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course. " The feller took the money and started away; and when be was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder — so — at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, * Well,' he says, * / don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.' " Smiley he stood sc" - '^ - his head and looking c^.... ^ Dan'l a long time, and at las: he says, ' I do wonder what i; the nation that frog throw'd o& for — I wonder if there ain' somethmg the matter with hin: — he 'pears to look ' _ ba^gy, somehow.' A..- ut ketcbed Dan'l by the nap &>, neck, and hefted him, and * Why, biame my cats i don't weigh five poond!* aoc him upade down, arK HE EEIXTHEI* OUT A VOWLZ, HAXUn'L or SHOT. belched out a double harvd of shot. And then he se- was, and he was the mi.. est man — ^he ht* iht frog dcnm " - '- Jot out after the fdkr, bcr.e rterer ketched ram. Aad ,* ^JHere Sbnca Wheeler bear . ^ r^nne ca'^ed irr/m the front ^3^1 got trp to sec wiiat •■ —a^t-: ;ng Vj rat as wed awaj, he saac Tri^rre yon. are, straogez; aiad Ky — I saxCt goi^ uj itt. . --z h. hetund/ ** 6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. frogs, and maybe you don't understand 'em ; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.' "And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, ' Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog ; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you.' " And then Smiley says, ' That's all right — that's all right — if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to wait. HE COULDN T BUDGE. " So he set there a good while, thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open, and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot — filled hmi pretty near up to his chin — and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says: "'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says, ' One — two — three — git ! ' and him and the feller A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 1 1 were approaching rapids, falls and cascades. We paused. The danger was unknown. We had our choice of shouldering our loads and making a ^(?7^?i;r through the woods, or of "shooting the rapids." Naturally we chose the more dangerous course. Shooting the rapids has often been described, and I will not repeat the description here. It is needless to say that I drove my frail bark through the boiling rapids, over the successive water- falls, amid rocks and vicious eddies, and landed, half a mile below, with whitened hair and a boat half full of water; and that the guide was upset, and boat, contents and man were strewn along the shore. After this common experience we went quickly on our journey, and, a couple of hours before sundown, reached the lake. If I live to my dying-day, I never shall forget its appearance. The lake is almost an exact circle, about a quarter of a mile in diameter. The forest about it was untouched by axe, and unkilled by artificial flooding. The azure water had a perfect setting of evergreens, in which all the shades of the fir, the bal- sam, the pine, and the spruce were perfectly blended; and at intervals on the shore in the emerald rim blazed the ruby of the cardinal-flower. It was at once evident that the unruffled waters had never been vexed by the keel of a boat. But what chiefly attracted my attention, and amused me, was the boiling of the water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the lake were a vast kettle, with a fire underneath. A tyro would have been aston- ished at this common phenomenon; but sportsmen will at once understand me when I say that the water boiled\V\i\\ the breaking trout. I studied the surface for some time to see upon what sort of flies they were feeding, in order to suit my cast to their appetites; but they seemed to be at play rather than feeding, leaping high in the air in graceful curves, and tumbling about each other as we see them in Adirondack pictures. It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some train- ing on the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncul- tivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman, however, will use anythmg but a fly, except he happens to be alone. I 2 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR, While Luke launched my boat, and arranged his seat in the stern, I prepared my rod and line. The rod is a bamboo, weighing seven ounces, which has to be spliced with a winding of silk thread every time it is used. This is a tedious process; but, by fasten- ing the joints in this way, a uniform spring is secured in the rod. No one devoted to high art would think of using a socket joint. My line was forty yards of untwisted silk upon a multiplying reel. The " leader " (I am very particular about my leaders) had been made to order from a domestic animal with which I had been acquainted. The fisherman requires as good a catgut as the violinist. The interior of the house -cat, it is well known, is exceedingly sensitive; but it may not be so well known that the reason why some cats leave the room in distress when a piano- forte is played is because the two instruments are not in the same key, and the vibrations of the chords of the one are in dis- cord with the catgut of the other. On six feet of this superior article I fixed three artificial flies — a simple brown hackle, a gray body with scarlet wings, and one of my own invention, which I thought would be new to the most experienced fly-catcher. The trout-fly does not resemble any known species of insect. It is a "conventionalized" creation, as we say of ornamentation. The theory is, that, fly-fishing being a high art, the fly must not be a tame imitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion of it. It requires an artist to construct one; and not every bungler can take a bit of red flannel, a peacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a cock's plume, a section of a hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny object that will not look like any fly, but still will suggest the universal conventional fly. I took my stand in the centre of the tipsy boat ; and Luke shoved off, and slowly paddled towards some lily-pads, while I began casting — unlimbering my tools, as it were. The fish had all disappeared. I got out, perhaps, fifty feet of line, with no response, and gradually increased it to one hundred. It is not difficult to learn to cast; but it is difficult to learn not to snap off the flies at every throw. Of this, however, we will not speak. I continued casting for some mom^ents, until I becam.e satisfied that there had been a miscalculation. Either the trout were too green to know what I was at, or they were dissatisfied with mj' offers. I reeled in, and changed the flies (that is, the fly that was not snapped off). After studying the color of the sky, of the A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 13 water, and of the foliage, and the moderated light of the after- noon, I put on a series of beguilers, all of a subdued brilliancy, in harmony with the approach of evening. At the second cast, which was a short one, I saw a splash where the leader fell, and gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceived the game, and did not need the unfeigned "dam " of Luke to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat from his head, and deposited it among the lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light. At the very first cast I saw that the hour had come. Three trout leaped into the air. The danger of this manoeuvre all fishermen understand. It is one of the commonest in the woods: three heavy trout taking hold at once, rushing indifferent directions, smash the tackle into flinders. I evaded this catch, and threw again. I recall the moment. A hermit thrush, on the tip of a balsam, uttered his long, liquid, evening note. Happen- ing to look over my shoulder, I saw the peak of Marcy gleam rosy in the sky (I can't help it that Marcy is fifty miles off, and cannot be seen from this region: these incidental touches are always used). The hundred feet of silk swished through the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly on the water as a three-cent-piece (which no slamming will give the weight of a ten) drops upon the contribution-plate. Instantly there was a rush, a swirl. I struck, and " Got him, by !" Never mind what Luke said I got him by. " Out on a fly ! " continued that irreverent guide; but I told him to back water and make for the centre of the lake. The trout, as soon as he felt the prick of the hook, was off like a shot, and took out the whole of the line with a rapidity that made it smoke. " Give him the butt !" shouted Luke. It is the usual remark in such an emergency. I gave him the butt; and* recog- nizing the fact and my spirit, the trout at once sank to the bot- tom, and sulked. It is the most dangerous mood of a trout; for you cannot tell what he will do next. We reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for him to reflect. A tightening of the line enraged him, and he soon developed his tactics. Coming to the surface, he made straight for the boat faster than I could reel in, and evidently with hostile intentions. " Look out for him! " cried Luke as he came flying in the air. I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the boat; and when I picked my traps up, he was spinning across the lake as if he had a new idea: H MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. but the line was still fast. He did not run far. I gave him the butt again; a thing he seemed to hate, even as a gift. In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the water in his rage, was coming back again, making straight for the boat, as before. Luke, who was used to these encounters, having read of them in the writings of travelers he had accompanied, raised his paddle in self-defense. The trout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack; and the danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast-button of two by the ATTACKED BY A TROUT. swiftly moving string. The trout plunged into the wa- ter with a hissing sound, and went away again with all the line on the reel. More butt ; more indignation on the part of the captive. The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and I was getting ex- hausted. We had been back and forth across the lake, and round and round the lake. What I feared was, that the trout would start up the inlet, and wreck us in the bushes. But he had a new fancy, and began the execution of a manoeuvre which I had never read of. Instead of coming straight towards me, he took a large circle, swimming rapidly, and gradually con- tracting his orbit. I reeled in, and kept my eye on him. Round and round he went, narrowing his circle. I began to suspect the game; which was, to twist my head off. When he had reduced THE VILLAGER AND THE SNAKE. ^5 the radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, he struck a tre- mendous pace through the water. It would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal to the occasion. Instead of turning round with him, as he expected, I stepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing. Round went the fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marcys all round the horizon; the rosy tint in the west made a broad band of pink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfect circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled. I was willing to give the malicious beast butt and line and all, if he would only go the other way for a change. When I came to myself, Luke was gafifingthe trout at the boat- side. Aft'^.r we had got him in, and dressed him, he weighed three- quarters of a pound. Fish always lose by being " got in and dressed." It is best to weigh them while they are in the water. The only really large one I ever caught got away with my leader when I f rst struck him. He weighed ten pounds. THE VILLAGER AND THE SNAKE. BY GEORGE THOMAS LANIGAN. /T'EORGE THOMAS LANIGAN, author of the " World's Fables," was born at St. Charles, P. Q., Canada, December lo, 1846. He was educated at the High School, Montreal, Canada, and was upon the editorial staff of the Neiu York World from 1874 until 1883. In 1884 he joined the staff of the Philadelphia Record, and he was connected with that journal at the time of his death, which occurred at Philadelphia, Februarys, 1886. A "V iLLAGER, one frosty day, found under a Hedge a Snake almost dead with cold. Moved with compassion, and having heard that Snake Oil was good for the Rheumatiz, he took it home and placed it on the Hearth, where it shortly began to wake and crawl. Meanwhile, the Villager having gone out to keep an Engagement with a Man 'round the Corner, the Vil- l6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. iager's Son (who had not drawn a sober Breath for a Week) entered, and, beholding the Serpent unfolding its plain, unvar- nished Tail, with the cry, "I've got 'em again !" fled to the office of the nearest Justice of the Peace, swore off, and became an Apostle of Temperance at $700 a week. The beneficent "GOT 'em again '" Snake next bit the Villager's Mother-in-law so severely thiif Death soon ended her sufferings — and his; then silently stole away, leaving the Villager deeply and doubly in its Debt. Moral — A Virtuous Action is not always its only Reward, A Snake in the Grass is Worth two in the Boot. HOIV WE ASTONISHED THE RIVERMOUTHIANS. \ 7 HOW WE ASTONISHED THE RIVERMOUTHIANS. BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. ^HOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH, born at Portsmouth, N. H., November II, 1S36, is well known as poet, novelist, essayist and editor. His first writings were contributed to the local press, and early in life he achieved immediate and wide recognition through various New York journals, and through the successive volumes of verse, which have followed one another at intervals of a few years since the publication of the first in 1854. He was con- nected editorially with the New York Evening Mirror, the Home Journal, and the Saturday Press in New York; in 1866 he was invited by Messrs. Ticknor & Fields to take charge of their new publication, Every Saturday, and l>e has ever since resided in Boston. In 1881 he succeeded to the editorship of The Atlantic Monthly. One of Mr. Aldrich's stories has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish and Magyar, and all his prose books have enjoyed European popularity, two of his works having appeared serially in the Revue des Deux Mondes. His peculiar vein of humor prevails notably in the volumes," Marjorie Daw and Other People," and in the " Story of a Bad Boy," but its flavor is felt in nearly every page of prose that he has written. Sailor Ben's arrival partly drove the New Orleans project from my brain. Besides, there was just then a certain movement on foot by the Centipede Club which helped to engross my attention. Pepper Whitcomb took the Captain's veto philosophically, observing that he thought from the first the governor wouldn't let me go. I don't think Pepper was quite honest in that. But to the subject in hand. Among the few changes that had taken place in Rivermouth during the past twenty years, there is one which I regret. I lament the removal of all those varnished iron cannon which used to do duty as posts at the corners of streets leading from the river. They were quaintly ornamental, each set upon end with a solid shot soldered into its mouth, and gave to that part of the town a picturesqueness very poorly atoned for by the conven- tional wooden stakes that have deposed them. These guns ("old sogers," the boys called them) had their story, like everything else in Rivermouth. When that everlast' ing last war — the war of 181 2, I mean — came to an end, all the brigs, schooners and barks fitted out at this port as privateers were jS MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. as eager to get rid of their useless twelve-pounders and swivels as they had previously been to obtain them. Many of the pieces had cost large sums, and now they were little better than so much crude iron — not so good, in fact, for they were clumsy things to break up and melt over. The Government didn't want them; private citizen didn't want them; they were a drug in the market. But there was one man, ridicu- lous beyond his generation, who got it into his head that a fortune was to be made out of these same guns. To buy them all, to hold on to them until war w-as de- clared again (as he had no doubt it would be in a few months) and then sell out at fabulous prices, this was the daring idea that addled the pate of Silas Trefethen, " Dealer in E. & W. I. Goods and Groceries," as the faded sign over his shop-door informed the public. Silas went shrewdly to work, buying up every old cannon he could lay hands on. His back- yard was soon crowded with broken-down gun-carriages, and his barn with guns, like an arsenal. When Silas's purpose got wind, it was astonishing how valuable that thing became which just now was worth nothing at all. "Ha, ha !" thought Silas; " somebody else is tryin' tu git control of the market. But I guess I've got the start of /w'w." So he went on buying and buying, oftentimes paying double the original price of the article. People in the neighboring towns collected all the worthless ordnance they could find, and sent it by the cart-load to Rivermouth. When his barn was full, Silas began piling the rubbish in his SILAS TREFETHEN. HOW WE ASTONISHED THE RIVERMOUTHIANS. 19 cellar, then in his parlor. He mortgaged the stock of his grocery- store, mortgaged his house, his barn, his horse, and would have mortgaged himself, if anyone would have taken him as security, in order to carry on the grand speculation. He was a ruined man, and as happy as a lark. Surely poor Silas was cracked, like the majority of his own can- non. More or less crazy he must have been always. Years before this he purchased an elegant rosewood coffin, and kept it in one of the spare rooms of his residence. He even had his name engraved on the silver-plate, leaving a blank after the word "died." The blank was filled up in due time, and well it was for Silas that he secured so stylish a coffin in his opulent days, for when he died his worldly wealth would not have bought him a pine box, to say nothing of rosewood. He never gave up expecting a war with Great Britain. Hopeful and radiant to the last, his dying words were, England — zvar — -few days — great profits ! It was that sweet old lady, Dame Jocelyn, who told me the story of Silas Trefethen ; for these things happened long before my day. Silas died in 181 7. At Trefethen's death his unique collection came under the auctioneer's hammer. Some of the larger guns were sold to the town, and planted at the corners of divers streets ; others went off to the iron-foundry ; the balance, numbering twelve, were dumped down on a deserted wharf at the foot of Anchor Lane, where, summer after summer, they rested at their ease in the grass and fungi, pelted in autumn by the rain, and annually buried by the winter snow. It is with these twelve guns that our story has to deal. The wharf where they reposed was shut off from the street by a high fence— a silent, dreamy old wharf, covered with strange weeds and mosses. On account of its seclusion and the good fishing it afforded, it was much frequented by us boys. There we met many an afternoon to throw out our lines, or play leap-frog among the rusty cannon. They were famous fellows in our eyes. What a racket they had made in the hey- day of their unchastened youth! What stories they might tell now, if their puffy metallic lips could only speak! Once they were lively talkers enough; but there the grim sea-dogs laj^ silent and forlorn in spite of all their former growlings. 20 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. They always seemed to me like a lot of venerable disabled lars, stretched out on a lawn in front of a hospital, gazing sea- ward and mutely lamenting their lost youth. But once more they were destined to lift up their dolorous voices — once more ere they keeled over and lay speechless for all time. And this is how it befell: Jack Harris, Charley Harden, Harry Blake and myself were fishing off the wharf one afternoon, when a thought flashed upon me like an inspiration. "I say, boys!" I cried, hauling in my line hand over hand. "I've got something! " "What does it pull like, youngster?" asked Harris, looking down at the taut line and expecting to see a big perch at least. "O, nothing in the fish way," I returned, laughing; "It's about the old guns." "What about them?" " I was thinking what jolly fun it would be to set one of the old sogers on his legs and serve him out a ration of gunpowder." Up came the three lines in a jiffy. An enterprise better suited to the disposition of my companions could not have been proposed. In a short time we had one of the smaller cannon over on its back and were busy scraping the green rust from the touch-hole. The mold had spiked the gun so effectually, that for awhile we fanciea wc should have to give up our attempt to resuscitate the old sogei. "A long gimlet would clear it out," said Charley Harden, " if we only had one." I looked to see if Sailor Ben's flag was flying at the cabin door, for he always took in the colors when he went off fishing. "When you want to know if the Admiral's aboard, jest cast an eye to the buntin', my hearties," says Sailor Ben. Sometimes in a jocose mood he called himself the Admiral, and I am sui'c he deserved to be one. The Admiral's flag was flying, and I soon procured a gimlet from his carefully kept tool-chest. Before long we had the gun in working order. A newspaper lashed to the end of a lath served as a swab to dust out the bore. Jack Harris blew through the touch-hole and pronounced all clear. Seeing our task accomplished so easily, we turned our atten- HOW WE ASTONISHED THE RIVERMOUTHIANS. 2 I tion to the other guns, which lay in all sorts of postures in the rank grass. Borrowing a rope from Sailor Ben, we managed with immense labor to drag the heavy pieces into position and place a brick under each muzzle to give it the proper elevation. When we beheld them all in a row, like a regular battery, we simulta- neously conceived an idea, the magnitude of which struck us dumb for a moment. Our lirst intention was to load and fire a single gun. How feeble and insignificant was such a plan compared to that which now sent the light our dancing into eyes ! " What could we have been thinking of !" cried Jack Har- ris. " We'll give 'em a broadside, to be sure, if we die lor it!" We turned to with a will, and bef ore V nightfall had nearly half the battery over- hauled and ready for service. To keep the artillery dry we stuffed wads of loose hemp into the muz- zles, and fitted wood- en pegs to the touch- holes. SAILOR BEN. At recess the next noon the Centipedes met in a corner of the school-yard to talk over the proposed lark. The original pro- jectors, though they would have liked to keep the thing secret, were obliged to make a club matter of it, inasmuch ao funds were required for ammunition. There had been no recent drain on the treasury, and the society could well afford to spend a fev/ dollars in so notable an undertaking. It was unanimously agreed that the plan should be carried out in the handsomest manner and a subscription to that end was taken on the spot. Several of the Centipedes hadn't a cent, 22 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. excepting the one strung around their necks ; others, however, were richer. I chanced to have a dollar, and it went into the cap quicker than lightning. When the club, in view of my munifi- cence, voted to name the guns " Uailey's Battery" I was prouder than I have ever been since over anything. The money thus raised, added to that already in the treasury, amounted to nine dollars — a fortune in those days ; but not more than we had use for. This sum was divided into twelve parts, for it would not do for one boy to buy all the powder, nor . even for us all to make our purchases at the same place. That would excite suspicion at any time, particularly at a period so remote from the Fourth of July. There were only three stores in town licensed to sell powder ; that gave each store four customers. Not to run the slightest risk of remark, one boy bought his powder on Monday, the next boy on Tuesday, and so on until the requisite quantity was in our possession. This we put into a keg, and carefully hid in a dry spot on the wharf. Our next step was to finish cleaning the guns, which occupied two afternoons, for several of the old sogers were in a very con- gested state indeed. Having completed the task, we came upon a difficulty. To set off the battery by daylight was out of the question ; it must be done at night ; it must be done with fuses, for no doubt the neighbors would turn out after the first two or three shots, and it would not pay to be caught in the vicinity. Who knew anything about fuses ? Who could arrange it so the guns would go off one after the other, with an interval of a minute or so between ? Theoretically we knew that a minute fuse lasted a minute ; double the quantity, two minutes; but practically we were at a standstill. There was but one person who could help us in this extremity — Sailor Ben. To me was assigned the duty of obtain- ing what information I could from the ex-gunner, it being left to my discretion whether or not to intrust him with our secret. So one evening I dropped into the cabin, and artfully turned the conversation to fuses in general, and then to particular fuses, but without getting much out of the old boy, who was busy mak- ing a twine hammock. Finally, I was forced to divulge the whole plot. The Admiral had a sailor's love for a joke, and entered at HOW WE ASTONISHED THE RIVERMOUTHIANS. 0% once and heartily into our scheme. He volunteered to prepare the fuses himself, and I left the labor in his hands, having bound him by several extraordinary oaths — such as " Hope-I-may-die," and " Shiver-my-timbers " — not to betray us, come what would. This was Monday evening. On Wednesday the fuses were ready. That night we were to unmuzzle Bailey's Battery. Mr. Grimshaw saw that something was wrong somewhere, for we wer^ restless and absent-minded in the classes, and the best of us came to grief before the morning session was over. When Mr. Grim- shaw announced " Guy Fawkes " as the subject of our next composition, you might have knocked down the Mystic Twelve with a feather. The coincidence was certainly curious, but when a man has committed, or is about to commit, an offense, a hundred trifles, which would pass unnoticed at another time, seem to point at him with convicting fingers. No doubt Guy Fawkes himself received many a start after he had got his wicked kegs of gun- powder neatly piled up under the House of Lords. Wednesday, as I have mentioned, was a half-holiday, and the Centipedes assembled in my barn to decide on the final arrange- ments. These were as simple as could be. As the fuses were connected, it needed but one person to fire the train. Hereupon arose a discussion as to who was the proper person. Some argued that I ought to apply the match, the battery being chris- tened after me, and the main idea, moreover, being mine. Others advocated the claim of Phil Adams, as the oldest boy. At last we drew lots for the post of honor. Twelve slips of folded paper, upon one of which was written *' Thou art the man," were placed in a quart measure, and thoroughly shaken ; then each member stepped up and lifted out his destiny. At a given signal we opened our billets. " Thou art the man," said the slip of paper trembling in my fingers. The sweets and anxieties of a leader were mine the rest of the afternoon. Directly after twilight set in Phil Adams stole down to the wharf and fixed the fuses to the guns, laying a train of powder from the principal fuse to the fence, through a chink of which I was to drop the match at midnight. At ten o'clock Rivermouth goes to bed. At eleven o'clock Rivermouth is as quiet as a country churchyard. At twelve 24 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. o'clock there is nothing left with which to compare the stillness that broods over the little seaport. In the midst of this stillness I arose and glided out of the house like a phantom bent on an evil errand ; like a phantom I flitted through the silent street, hardly drawing breath until I knelt down beside the fence at the appointed place. Pausing a moment for my heart to stop thumping, I lighted the match and shielded it with both hands until it was well under way, and then dropped the blazing splinter on the slender thread of gunpowder. A noiseless flash instantly followed, and all was dark again, I peeped through the crevice in the fence, and saw the main fuse spitting out sparks like a conjurer. Assured that the train had not failed, I took to my heels, fearful lest the fuse m.ight burn more rapidly than we calculated, and cause an explosion before I could get home. This, luckily, did not happen. There's a special Providence that watches over idiots, drunken men, and boys. I dodged the ceremony of undressing by plunging into bed, jacket, boots and all. I am not sure I took off my cap ; but T know that I hardly pulled the coverlid over me, when "BOOM!" sounded the first gun of Bailey's Battery. I lay as still as a mouse. In less than two minutes there was another burst of thunder, and then another. The third gun was a tremendous fellow, and fairly shook the house. The town was waking up. Windows were thrown open here and there, and people called to each other across the streets, ask- ing what that firing was for. " BOOM!" went gun number four. I sprung out of bed and tore off my jacket, for I heard the Captain feeling his way along the wall to my chamber. I was half undressed by the time he found the knob of the door. " I say, sir," I cried, " do you hear those guns ? " "Not being deaf, I do," said the Captain, a little tartly — any reflection on his hearing always nettled him — "but what on earth they are for I can't conceive. You had better get up and dress yourself." " I'm nearly dressed, sir." " BOOM ! BOOM ! " — two of the guns had gone off together. The door of Miss Abigail's bedroom opened hastily, and that pink of maidenly propriety stepped out into the hall in her night- HOW WE ASTONISHED THE RIVERMOUTHIANS. 25 gown — the only indecorous thing I ever knew her to uo. SJie held a lighted candle in her hand, and looked like a very aged Lady Macbeth. " Oh, Dan'el, this is dreadful ! What do you suppose it means ? " " I really can't suppose," said the Captain, rubbing his ear; ''but I guess it's over now." "BOOM!" said Bailey's Battery. Rivermouth was wide awake now, and half the male population were in the streets, running different ways, for the firing seemed to proceed from opposite points of the town. Everybody way- laid everybody else with questions ; but as no one knew what was the occasion of the tumult, people who were not usually nervous began to be oppressed by the mystery. Some thought the town was being bombarded ; some thought the world was coming to an end, as the pious and ingenious Mr. Miller had predicted it would ; but those who couldn't form any theory whatever were the most perplexed. In the mean while Bailey's Battery bellowed away at regular intervals. The greatest confusion reigned everywhere by this time. People with lanterns rushed hither and thither. The town-watch had turned out to a man, and marched off, in admir- able order, in the wrong direction. Discovering their mistake, they retraced their steps, and got down to the wharf just as the last cannon belched forth its lightning. A dense cloud of sulphurous smoke floated over Anchor Lane, obscuring the starlight. Two or three hundred people, in vari- ous stages of excitement, crowded about the upper end of the wharf, not liking to advance farther until they were satisfied that the explosions were over. A board was here and there blown from the fence, and through the openings thus afforded a few of the more daring spirits at length ventured to crawl. The cause of the racket soon transpired. A suspicion that they had been sold gradually dawned on the Rivermouthians. Many were exceedingly indignant, and declared that no penalty was severe enough for those concerned in such a prank; others — and these were the very people who had been terrified nearly out of their wits — had the assurance to laugh, saying that they knew all along it was only a trick. The town-watch boldly took possession of the ground, and the 26 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. crowd began to disperse. Knots of gossips lingered here and there near the place, indulging \\\ vain surmises as to who the invisible gunners could be. There was no more noise that night, but many a timid person lay awake, expecting a renewal of the mysterious cannonading. The Oldest Inhabitant refused to go to bed on any terms, but persisted in sitting up in a rocking-chair, with his hat and mittens on, until daybreak. I thought I should never get to sleep. The moment I drifted off in a doze I fell to laughing, and woke myself up. But tov/ards morning slumber overtook me, and I had a series of dis- agreeable dreams, in one of which I was waited upon by the THE END OF BAILEY S BATTERY. ghost of Silas Trefethen with an exorbitant bill for the use of his guns. In another, I was dragged before a court-martial, and sentenced by Sailor Ben, in a frizzled wig and three-cornered cocked hat, to be shot to death by Bailey's Battery — a sentence which Sailor Ben was about to execute with his own hand, when I suddenly opened my eyes and found the sunshine lying pleas- antly across my face. I tell you I was glad ! That unaccountable fascination which leads the guilty to hover about the spot where his crime was committed, drew me down to the wharf as soon as I was dressed. Phil Adams, Jack Harris and others of the conspirators v/ere already there, examining with a mingled feeling of curiosity and apprehension the havoc accomplished by the battery. ROIV WE ASTONISHED THE RIVERMOUTHIANS. 27 The fence was badly shattered, and the ground ploughed up for several yards round the place where the guns formerly lay — formerly lay, for now they were scattered every which way. There was scarcely a gun that hadn't burst. Here was one ripped open from muzzle to breech, and there was another with its mouth blown into the shape of a trumpet. Three of the guns had disappeared bodily, but on looking over the edge of the wharf we saw them standing on end in the tide-mud. They had popped overboard in their excitement. "I tell you what, fellows," whispered Phil Adams, "It is lucky we didn't try to touch 'em off with punk. They'd have blown us all to flinders." The destruction of Bailey's Battery was not, unfortunately, the only catastrophe. A fragment of one of the cannon had carried away the chimney of Sailor Ben's cabin. He was very mad at first, but having prepared the fuse himself, he didn't dare com- plain openly, " I'd have taken a reef in the blessed stove-pipe," said the Admiral, gazing ruefully at the smashed chimney, "if I had known as how the flag-ship was agoin' to be under fire." The next day he rigged out an iron funnel, which, being in sections, could be detached and taken in at a moment's notice. On the whole, I think he was resigned to the demolition of his brick chimney. The stove-pipe was a great deal more shipshape. The town was not so easily appeased. The selectmen deter- mined to make an example of the guilty parties, and offered a jeward for their arrest, holding out a promise of pardon to any one of the offenders who would furnish information against the rest. But there were no faint hearts among the Centipedes. Suspicion rested for a while on several persons — on the soldiers at the fort; on a crazy fellow, known about town as " Bottle- Nose; " and at last on Sailor Ben. "Shiver my timbers!" cried the deeply injured individual, "Do you suppose, sir, as I have lived to sixty years, an' aint got no more sense than to go for to blaze away at my own upper riggin' ? It doesn't stand to reason." It certainly did not seem probable that Mr. Watson would maliciously knock over his own chimney, and Lawyer Hackett, who had the case in hand, bowed himself out of the Admiral's cabin, convinced that the right man had not been discovered. 28 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. People living by the sea are always more or less superstitious. Stories of spectre ships and mysterious beacons, that lure vessels out of their course and wreck them on unknown reefs, were among the stock legends of Rivermouth; and not a few people in the town were ready to attribute the firing of those guns to' some supernatural agency. The Oldest Inhabitant remembered that when he was a boy a dim-looking sort of schooner hove to in the offing one foggy afternoon, fired off a single gun, that didn't make any report, and then crumbled to nothing, spar, mast and hull, like a piece of burnt paper. The authorities, however, were of the opinion that human hands had something to do with the explosion, and they resorted to deep-laid stratagems to get hold of the said hands. One of their traps came very near catching us. They artfully caused an old brass field-piece to be left on a wharf near the scene of our late operations. Nothing in the world but the lack of money to buy powder saved us from falling into the clutches of the two watchmen, who lay secreted for a week in a neighbor- ing sail-loft. It was many a day before the midnight bombardment ceased to be the town - talk. The trick was so audacious, and on so grand a scale, that nobody thought for an instant of connecting us lads with it. Suspicion, at length, grew weary of lighting on the wrong person, and as conjecture — like the physicians in the epitaph — was in vain, the Rivermouthians gave up the idea of finding out who had astonished them. They never did find out, and never will, unless they read this veracious history. If the selectmen are still disposed to punish the malefactors, I can supply Lawyer Hackett with evidence enough to convict Pepper Whitcomb, Phil Adams, Charley Marden and the other honorable members of the Centipede Club. But, really, I don't think it would pay now. THE LEGEND OF MIMIR. 29 THE LEGEND OF MIMIR. BY ROBERT JONES BURDETTE taOBERT JONES BURDETTE was born at Greenesborough, Pa., July 30, *. 1844. His family removed to Illinois, where he received an education in the Peoria public schools, and where he enlisted for the war in 1862. Some years after his return he became associate editor of the Burlingicn Hawkeye, with which his name is identified. He is well known as a humorous lecturer and author. It is a beautiful legend of the Norse land. Amilias was the village blacksmith, and under the spreading chestnut treekjn, his village smithophjken stood. He the hot iron gehammered and sjhod horses for fifty cents all round please. He made t i n hjelmets for the gjodds,and stove pjipe trousers for the hjeroes. Mimir was a rival blacksmith. He didn't go in very much for defensive armor, but he was light- ning on t w o - edged Bj swords and c u t - a n d - slash svjcutlass- ssses. He made chyjeese knives for the gjodds, and he made the great Bjsvsstnsen, an Arkansaw toothpick that would make a free incision clear into the transverse semi-colon of a cast-iron Ichthyosaurus, and never turn its edge. That was the kind of a Bhjairpin Mimir said he was. One day Amilias made an impenetrable suit of armor for a second-class gjodd, and put it on himself to test it, and boastfully 'SHAKE YOURSELF. so MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. inserted a card in the Sveusska Nordc?-bjravisk jkanaheldcsplvtdcn- skgorodovitsakcn, saying tliat he was wearing a suit of home-made, best chilled Norway merino underwear, that would nick the unnumbered saw teeth in the pot metal cutlery of the iron-mon- gery over the way. That, Amilias remarked to his friend Bjohna Bjrobinssson, was the kind of a Bdjucckk he was. When Mimir spelled out the card next morning, he said, "Bjjj ! " and went to work with a charcoal furnace, a cold anvil, and the new isomorphic process, and in a little while he came down-street with a sjword, that glittered like a dollar-store diamond, and met Amilias down by the new opera-house. Amilias buttoned on his new Bjarmor and said: " If you have no hereafter use for your chyjeese kjnife, strike." Mimir spat on his hands, whirled his skjword above his head and fetched Amilias a swipe that seem.ed to miss everything except the empty air, through which it softly whistled. Amilias smiled, and said "goon," adding that it " seemed to him he felt a general sense of cold iron somewhere in the neighborhood, but he hadn't been hit." "Shake yourself," said Mimir. Amilias shook himself, and immediately fell into halves, the most neatly divided man that ever went beside himself. " That's where the boiler-maker was away off in his diagnosis," said Mimir, as he went back to his shop to put up the price of cutlery 65 per cent, in all lines, wnth an unlimited advance on special orders. Thus do we learn that a good action is never thrown away, and that kind words and patient love will overcome the harshest natures. TVSHMAKER' S TOOTHPULLER. 3 J TUSHMAKER'S TOOTHPULLER. BY GEORGE H. DERBY. /-^EORGE H. DERBY, the first of the great modern humorists, who made his pseudonym of "John Phoenix " a household v/ord, was bom in Nor- folk County, Mass., in 1824, of an old Salem family. He was graduated at West Point (where his peculiar gift frequently showed itself) in 1846, and he saw active service as Captain of Engineers in the Mexican War. He was wounded at Cerro Gordo, and at the conclusion of the war he was stationed iu California. It was here that he published (first in the San Diego Herald) the humorous pieces which won him immediate celebrity throughout the country. He was sunstruck while building lighthouses on the Florida coast ; soften- ing of the brain ensued, and he died in an insaneasylum at New York in 1861. Dr. Tushmaker was never regularly bred as a physician or surgeon, but he possessed naturally a strong mechanical genius and a fine appetite; and finding his teeth of great service in grat- ifying the latter propensity, he concluded that he could do more good in the world, and create more real happiness therein, by put- ting the teeth of its inhabitants in good order, than in any other way; so Tushmaker became a dentist. He was the man that first invented the method of placing small cog-wheels in the back teeth for the more perfect mastication of food, and he claimed to be the original discoverer of that method of filling cavities with a kind of putty, which, becoming hard directly, causes the tooth to ache so grievously that it has to be pulled, thereby giving the dentist two successive fees for the same job. Tushmaker was one day seated in his ofifice, in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, when a stout old fellow, named Byles, presented himself to have a back tooth drawn. The dentist seated his patient in the chair of torture, and, opening his mouth, discovered there an enormous tooth, on the right hand side, about as large, as he afterwards expressed it, " as a small Polyglot Bible." I shall have trouble with this tooth, thought Tushmaker, but he clapped on his hea- viest forceps, and pulled. It didn't come. Then he tried the turn-screw, exerting his utmost strength, but the tooth wouldn't 3» it ARK T'-VAIS'S UBRARY Oh HIHOK. sti;. vio ?■ ' ■ rn i-' a wt' he : thin?. It iras a c inc ne, we in 's were made. r .T ma'if#.r fr. T*vT,-^^ **and 'iw th<» .?>«! a ha 'cedaji -I and axk, ir.t 'J the iron chair, the for- ce:.. .,'. ^c machine a' four feet turne- uiv ^iit so too, but they fc-... .„e rooi^ :._.,n decayed; and five stir- !«" ■*» .tT^ ''OJHB or jnAM Oi ' V... -ive «»«D«d »n 2 fev 1 a Tt c- I. ho- a;< mciJ< T Ik A l«( p V 1T Jii^^t*, MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. stu. ''Oo pAv^.y from here," said Tushmaker to Byles, "and return I-^ a week, and I'll draw that tooth for you, or knew the reason why." Byles got up, clapped a handkerchief to his jaw, and put forth. Then the dentist went to work, and in three days he invented an instrument which he was confident would pull any- thing. It was a combination of the lever, pully, wheel and axle, inclined plane, wedge and screw. The cast- ings were made, and the machine put up in the office, over an iron chair rendered per- fectly stationary by iron rods going down into the foundations of the granite building. In a week old Byles returned; he was clamped into the iron chair, the for- ceps connected with the machine attached firmly to the tooth, and Tushmaker, stationing himself in the rear, took hold of a lever four feet in length. He turned it slightly. Old Byles ofave a eroan and lifted his ri^ht leg. Another turn ; another groan, and up went the leg again. -'WTiat do you raise your leg for?" asked the doctor. " I can't help it/' said the patient. "Weil," rejoined Tusli- maker, '* that tooth is bound to come out now." He turned the lever clear round with a sudden jerk, and snapped old Byles's head clean and clear from his shoulders, leaving a space of ' four inches between the severed parts ! They had a post-viortem examination — the roots of the tooth were found extending down the right side, through the right leg, and turning up in two prongs under the sole of the right foot! "No wonder," said Tushmaker, "he raised his right leg." The jury thoi^ght so too, but they found the roots much decayed; and five sur- tushmaker's wonderful tooth- puller. THE TOMB OF ADAM ^ -, geons swearing that mortification would have ensued in a few months, Tushmaker was cleared on a verdict of " justifiable homicide." He was a little sh}^ of that instrument for some time afterward; but one day an old lady, feeble and flaccid, came in to have a tooth drawn, and thinkmg it would come out very easy, Tushmaker concluded, just by way of variety, to try the machine. He did so, and at the first turn drew the old lady's skeleton com- pletely and entirely from her body, leaving her a mass of quiv- ering jelly in her chair ! Tushmaker took her home in a pillow- case. She lived seven years after that, and they called her the "India-Rubber Woman." She had suffered terribly with the rheumatism, but after this occurrence, never had a pain in her bones. The dentist kept them in a glass case. After this, the machine was sold to the contractor of the Boston Custom-house, and it was found that a child of three years of age could, by a single turn of the screw, raise a stone weighing twenty-three tons. Smaller ones were made on the same principle, and sold to the keepers of hotels and restaurants. They were used for boning turkies. There is no moral to this story whatever, and it is pos- sible that the circumstances may have become slightly exagger- ated. Of course, there can be no doubt of the truth of the main incidents. THE TOMB OF ADAM. BY MARK TWAIN. The Greek Chapel is the most roomy, the richest and the show- iest chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its altar, like that of all the Greek churches, is a lofty screen that extends clear across the chapel, and is gorgeous with gildingand pictures. The numerous lamps that hang before it are of gold and silver, and cost great sums. But the feature of the place is a short column that rises from the middle of the marble pavement of the chapel, and marks the exact centre of the earth. To satisfy himself that this spot was really the centre of the earth, a skeptic once paid well for the privilege of ascending to the dome of the church, to see if the sun gave him a shadow at noon. He came down perfectly convinced. The day was very 34 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. 1 ill III 1 1 i k 1 i \-''-' ' .:^ I'l 1 fi'.. ■ ■ m V 1 cloudy, and the sun threw no shadows at all; but the man was satisfied that if the sun had come out and made shadows, it could not have made any for him. Proofs like these are not ta be set aside by the idle tongues of cavilers. To such as are not bigoted, and are willing to be convinced, they carry a conviction that nothing can ever shake. If even greater proofs than those I have mentioned are wanted,. to satisfy the headstrong and foolish that this is the genuine centre of the earth, they are here. The greatest of them lies in the fact that from under this very column was taken the (///sf from which Adam was inadc. This, can surely be regarded in the light of a settler. It is. not likely that the original first man would have been made from an inferior qual- ity of earth, when it was entirely convenient to get first quality from the world's centre. This will strike any- reflecting mind for- cibly. That Adam was formed of dirt procured in this very spot, is amply prov- en by the fact that in six thousand years no man has ever been able to prove that the dirt was not procured here whereof he was made. It is a singular circumstance that right under the roof of this same great church, and not far away from that illustrious column, Adam himself, the father of the human race, lies buried. There is no question that he is actually buried in the grave which is pointed out as his-r— there can be none — because it has never yet been proven that that grave is not the grave in which he is buried. \ \l^^"^^ v^.. THE GRAVE OF A RELATIVE. THE NEW LIVERY. pie who sit next us in church (I wonder who they are: it's very unpleasant to sit next to people you don't know; and, positively, that girl, the dark-haired one with large eyes, carries the same muff she did last year; it's big enough for a family) have a kind of brown morocco binding. I must tell you one reason why I fixed upon the pale blue. You know that aristocratic-looking young man, in white cravat and black pantaloons and waistcoat, whom we saw at Saratoga a year ago, and who always had such a beautiful, sanctimonious look, and such small white hands; well, he is a minister, as we supposed, " an unworthy candidate, an un- profitable husband," as he calls himself in that delicious voice of his. He has been quite taken up amono- us. He has been asked a good deal to dinner, and there was hope of his being settled as colleague to the Doctor, only Mr, Potiphar (who can be stubborn, you know) insisted that the Rev. Cream Cheese, though a very good young man, he didn't doubt, was addicted to candle- sticks. I suppose that's some- thing awful. Bui. conld you be- lieve anything awful of him ? I asked Mr. Potiphar what he meant by saying such things. "I mean," said he, " that he's a Puseyite, and I've no idea of being tied to the apron-strings of the Scarlet Woman." Dear Caroline, who is the Scarlet AVoman ! upon your honor, if you have ever heard any scandal of Mr, Potiphar. "What is it about candlesticks?" said I to Mr. Potiphar, " Perhaps Mr. Cheese finds gas too bright for his eyes; and that's his misfortune, not his fault." "Polly," said Mr. Potiphar — who wi/l csdl me Polly, although MRS. CRGESUS- Dearest, tell me, -ig MARK TWAIX'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. it sounds so very vulgar — "please not to meddle with things you don't understand. You may have Cream Cheese to dinner as much as you choose, but I will not have him in the pulpit of my church." The same day, ^Ix. Cheese happened in about lunch-time, and I asked him if his eyes were really weak. " Not at all," said he; " why do you ask ? " Then I told him that I had heard that he was so fond of candlesticks. Ah ! Caroline, you should have seen him then. He stopped in the midst of pouring out a glass of Mr. P.'s best old port, and, holding the decanter in one hand and the glass in the other, he looked so beautifully sad, and said in that sweet low voice: " Dear Mrs. Potiphar, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Then he filled up his glass, and drank the wine off with such a mournful, resigned air, and wiped his lips so gently with his cambric handkerchief (I saw that it was a hem- stitch), that I had no voice to ask him to take a bit of the cold chicken, which he did, however, without my asking him. But when he said, in the same low voice, " A little more breast, dear Mrs. Potiphar," I was obliged to run into the drawing-room for a moment, to recover myself. Well, after he had lunched, I told him that I wished to take his advice upon something connected with the church (for a prayer-book is, you know, dear), and he looked so sweetly at me, that, would you believe it, I almost wished to be a Catholic, and to confess three or four times a week, and to have him for my confessor. But it's very wicked to wish to be a Catholic, and it wasn't real much, you know: but somehow I thought so. When I asked him in what velvet he would advise me to have my prayer-book bound, he talked beautifully for about twenty min- utes. I wish you could have heard him. I'm not sure that I understood much of what he said — how should I ? — but it was very beautiful. Don't laugh, Carrie, but there was one thing I did understand, and which, as it came pretty often, quite helped me through: it was, "Dear Mrs. Potiphar;" you can't tell how nicely he says it. He began by telling me that it was very im- portant to consider all the details and little things about the church. He said they were all timbales, or cymbals — or some- thing of that kind; and then he talked very prettily about the THE NEW LIVERY. 39 stole, and the violet and scarlet capes of the cardinals, and purple chasubles, and the lace edge of the Pope's little short gown; and — do you know it was very funny — but it seemed to me, somehow, as if I was talking with Portieror Florine Lefevre, except that he used such beautiful words. Well, by and by he said: "Therefore, dear Mrs. Potiphar, as your faith is so pure and childlike, and as I observe that the light from the yellow panes usually falls across your pew, I would advise that you cymbalize your faith (wouldn't that be noisy in church?) by binding your prayer-book in pale blue; the color of skim-milk, dear Mrs. Potiphar, which is so full of pastoral associa- tions." Why did he emphasize the word "pastoral"? Do you wonder that I like Cream Cheese, dear Caroline, when he is so gentle and religious — and such a pretty religion, too ! For he is not only well-dressed, and has such aris- tocratic hands and feet, in the parlor, but he is so perfectly gentlemanly in the pulpit. He never raises his voice too loud, and he has such wavy gestures You can imagine how pleasantly the seed of the church Lent is passing since I see so much of him; and then it is so appropriate to Lent to be intimate with a minister. He goes with me to church a great deal; for Mr. Potiphar, of course, has no time for that, except on Sundays; and it is really delightful to see such piety. He makes the responses in the most musical manner; and when he kneels upon entering the pew, he is the admiration of the whole church. He buries his face entirely in a cloud of cambric pocket-handkerchief, with his initial embroidered at the corner; and his hair is beautifully parted down behind, which is very fortunate, as otherwise it would 40 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. look SO badly when only half his head showed How thankful we ought to be that we live now with so many churches, and such fine ones, and such gentlemanly ministers as Mr. Cheese. And how nicely it's arranged that, after dancing and dining for two or three months constantly, during which, of course, we can only go to church Sundays, there comes a time for stopping, when we are tired out, and for going to church every day, and (as Mr. P. says) "striking a balance;" and thinking about being good, and all those things. We don't lose a great deal, you know. It makes a variety, and we all see each other just the same, only we don't dance I asked Mr. Cheese what he thought of balls, whether it was so very wicked to dance, and go to parties, if one only went to church twice a day on Sundays. He patted his lips a moment with his handkerchief, and then he said — and, Caroline, you can always quote the Rev. Cream Cheese as authority — "Dear Mrs. Potiphar, it is recorded in Holy Scripture that the King danced before the Lord." Darling, if anything should happen, I don't believe he would object much to your dancing. What gossips we women are, to be sure ! I meant to write you about our new livery, and I am afraid I have tired you out already. You remember, when you were here, I said that I meant to have a livery; for my sister Margaret told me that when they used to drive in Hyde Park, with the old Marquis of Mammon, it was always so delightful to hear him say, "Ah ! there is Lady Lobster's livery." It was so aristocratic. And in countries where certain colors distinguish certain families, and are hereditary, so to say, it is convenient and pleasant to recognize a coat-of-arms, or a livery, and to know that the representative of a great and famous fam- ily is passing by. " That's a Howard, that's a Russell, that's a Dorset, that's De Colique, that's Mount Ague," old Lord Mammon used to say as the carriages whirled by. He knew none of them personally, I believe, except De Colique, and Mount Ague, but then it was so agreeable to be able to know their liveries. Now, why shouldn't we have the same arrangement ? Why not have the Smith colors, and the Brown colors, and the Black col- ors, and the Potiphar colors, etc., so that the people might say, "Ah ! there go the Potiphar arms." THE NEIV LIVERY. 41 There is one difficulty, Mr. P. says, and that is, that he found five hundred and sixty-seven Smiths in the Directory, which might lead to some confusion. But that was absurd, as I told him, because everybody would know which of the Smiths was able to keep a carriage, so that the livery would be recognized directly the moment that any of the family were seen in the carriage. Upon which he said, in his provoking way, " Why have any liv- ery at all, then?" and he persisted in saying that no Smith was ever the Smith for three generations, and that he knew at least twenty, each of whom was able to set up his carriage and stand by his colors. " But then a livery is so elegant and aristocratic," said I, " and it shows that a servant is a servant." That last was a strong argument, and I thought that Mr. P. would have nothing to say against it; but he rattled on for some time, askmg me what right I had to be aristocratic, or, in fact, any body else; went over his eternal old talk about aping foreign habits, as if we hadn't a right to adopt the good usages of all nations, and finally said that the use of liveries among us was not only a " pure peacock absurdity," as he called it, but that no genuine American would ever ask another to assume a menial badge. "Why ? " said I, " is not an American servant a servant still ? " *' Most undoubtedly," he said ; " and when a man is a servant, let him serve faithfully ; and in this country especially, where to-morrow he may be the served, and not the servant, let him not be ashamed of serving. But, Mrs. Potiphar, I beg you to observe that a servant's livery is not, like a general's uniform, the badge of honorable service, but of menial service. Of course, a serv- ant may be as honorable as a general, and his work quite as necessary and well done. But, for all that, it is not so respected nor coveted a situation, I believe ; and, in social estimation, a man suffers by wearing a livery, as he never would if he wore none. And while in countries in which a man is proud of being a servant (as every man may well be of being a good one), and never looks to anything else, nor desires any change, a livery may be very proper to the state of society, and very agreeable to his own feelings, it is quite another thing in a society consti- tuted upon altogether different principles, where the servant of to-day is the senator of to-morrow. Besides that, which I sup> 42 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. pose is too fine-spun for you, livery is a remnant of a feudal state, of which we abolish every trace as fast as we can. That ivhich is represented by livery is not consonant with our principles." How the man runs on, vv-hen he gets going this way ! I said, in answer to all this flourish, that I considered a livery very much the thing ; that European families had liveries, and American families might have liveries ; that there was an end of it, and I meant to have one. Besides, if it is a matter of family, I should like to know who has a better right? There was Mr. Potiphar's grandfather, to be sure, was only a skillful blacksmith and a good citizen, as Mr. P. says who brought up a family in the fear of the Lord. How oddly he puts those things ! But my ancestors, as you know, are a different matter. Starr Mole, who interests himself in genealogies, and knows the family name and crest of all the English nobility, has " climbed our family tree," as Staggers says, and finds that I am lineally descended from one of those two brothers who came over in some of those old times, in some of those old ships, and settled in some of those old places somewhere. So you see, dear Caro- line, if birth give any one a right to coats of arms and liveries, and all those things, I feel myself sufficiently entitled to have them. But I don't care anything about that. The Gnus, and Croe- suses, and Silkes, and theSettem Downes have their coats of arms, and crests, and liveries, and I am not going to be behind, I tell you. Mr. P. ought to remember that a great many of these families were famous before they came to this country, and there is a kind of interest in having on your ring, for instance, the same crest that your ancestor two or three centuries ago had upon her ring. One day I was quite wrought up about the mat- ter, and I said as much to him. "Certainly," said he, "certainly; you are quite right. If I had Sir Philip Sidney to my ances4;or, I should wear his crest upon my ring, and glory in my relationship, and I hope I should be a better man for it. I wouldn't put his arms upon my car- riage, however, because that would mean nothing but ostentation. It would be merely a flourish of trumpets to say that I was his descendant, and nobody would know that, either, if my name THE NEW LIVERY. 43 chanced to be Boggs. In my library I might hang a copy of the family escutcheon, as a matter of interest and curiosity to myself, for I'm sure I shouldn't understand it. Do you suppose Mrs. Gnu knows what gitlcs argent are ? A man may be as proud of his family as he chooses, and, if he have noble ancestors, with good reason. But there is no sense in parading that pride. It is an afi'ectation, the more foolish that it achieves nothing — no more credit at Stewart's — no more real respect in society. Besides, Polly, who were Mrs. Gnu's ancestors, or Mrs. Croesus's, or Mrs. Settem Downe's ? Good, quiet, honest and humble people, who did their work, and rest from their labor. Centuries ago, in England, some drops of blood from ' noble ' veins may have mingled with the blood of their forefathers ; or, even, the founder of the family name may be historically famous. What then? Is IMrs. Gnu's family ostentation less absurd? Do you understand the meaning of her crest, and coats of arms, and liveries? Do you suppose she does herself? But in forty-nine cases out of fifty, there is nothing but a similarity of name upon which to found all this flourish of aristocracy." My dear old Pot is getting rather prosy, Carrie. So, when he had finished that long speech, during which I was looking at the lovely fashion-plates in Harper^ I said: '■'■ What colors do you think I'd better have? " He looked at me with that singular expression, and went out suddenly, as if he were afraid he might say something. He had scarcely gone before I heard: " My dear Mrs. Potiphar, the sight of you is refreshing as Hermon's dew." I colored a little ; Mr. Cheese says such things so softly. But I said good morning, and then asked him about liveries, etc. He raised his hand to his cravat (it was the most snowy lawn, Carrie, and tied in a splendid bow). "Is not this a livery, dear Mrs. Potiphar?" And then he went off into one of those pretty talks, in what Mr. P. calls "the language of artificial flowers," and wound up by quoting Scripture — " Servants, obey your masters." That was enough for me. So I told Mr. Cheese that, as he had already assisted me in colors once, I should be most glad to have him do so again. What a time we had, to be sure, talk- ing of colors, and cloths, and gaiters, and buttons, and knee- 44 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. breeches, and waistcoats, and plush, and coats, and lace, and hatbands, and gloves, and cravats, and cords, and tassels, and hats. Oh ! it was delightful. You can't fancy how heartily the Rev. Cream entered into the matter. He was quite enthusiastic, and at last he said, w'ith so much expression, " Dear Mrs. Potiphar, Vv-hy not have a chasseur ? I thought it was some kind of French dish for lunch, so I said : "I am so sorry, any in the "Oh," said he, could hire one, you Then I thought musical instrument monicon,or some- so I said in a "I'm not fond of but we haven't house." "but you know." it must be a — a panhr.r- thing like that, general way — very, very it." "But it would be so fine to have him standing on the back of the carriage, his plumes waving in the wind, and his lace and pol- ished belts flashing in the sun, as you whirled down Broadway." Of course I knew then that he was speak- ing of those military gentlemen who ride behind carriages, espe- cially upon the Continent, as Margaret tells me, and who, in Paris, are very useful to keep the savages and wild-beasts at bay in the Champs Elysees, for you know they are intended as a guard. THE NEW LIVERY. THE NE W LIVER Y. ^ i- But I knew Mr, P. would be firm about that, so I asked Mr. Cheese not to kindle my imagination with the chasseur. We concluded finally to have only one full-sized footman, and a fat driver. " The corpulence is essential, dear Mrs. Potiphar," said Mr. Cheese. " I have been much abroad ; I have mingled, I trust, in good, which is to say, Christian society: and I must say, that few things struck me more upon my return than that the ladies who drive very handsome carriages, with footmen, etc., in livery, should permit such thin coachmen upon the box. I really believe that Mrs. Settem Downe's coachman doesn't weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds, which is ridiculous. A lady might as well hire a footman with insufficient calves, as a coach- man who weighs less than two hundred and ten. That is the minimum. Besides, I don't observe any wigs upon the coach- men. Now, if a lady set up her carriage with the family crest and fine liveries, why, I should like to know, is the wig of the coachman omitted, and his cocked hat also ? It is a kind of shabby, half-ashamed way of doing things — a garbled glory. The cock-hatted, knee-breeched, paste-buckled, horse-hair-wigged coachman is one of the institutions of the aristocracy. If we don't have him complete, we somehow make ourselves ridicu- lous. If we do have him complete, why, then ! " — Here Mr. Cheese coughed a little, and patted his mouth with his cambric. But what he said was very true. I should like to come out with the wig — I mean upon the coachman ; it would so pcit down the Settem Downes. But I'm sure old Pot wouldn't have it. He lets me do a great deal. But there is a line which I feel he won't let me pass. I mentioned my fears to Mr. Cheese. "Well," he said, "Mr. Potiphar maybe right. I remember an expression of my carnal days about ' coming it too strong,' which seems to me to be applicable just here." After a little more talk, I determined to have red plush breeches, with a black cord at the side — white stockings — low shoes, with large buckles — a yellow waistcoat, with large buttons ■ — lappels to the pockets — and a purple coat, very full and fine, bound with gold lace — and the hat banded with a full gold rosette. Don't you think that would look well in Hyde Park? And, darling Carrie, why shouldn't we have in Broadway what they have in Hyde Park ? 46 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. When Mr. P. came in, I told him all about it. He laughed a good deal, and said, " What next ? " So I am not sure he would be so very hard upon the wig. The next morning I had appointed to see the new footman, and as Mr. P. went out he turned and said to me, " Is your footman coming to-day?" "Yes," I answered. "Well," said he, "don't forget the calves. You know that everything in the matter of livery depends upon the calves." And he went out laughing silently to himself, with — actually, Carrie — a tear in his eye. But it was true, wasn't it ? I remember in all the books and pictures how much is said about the calves. In advertisements, etc., it is stated that none but well-developed calves need apply ; at least it is so in England, and, if I h^ave a livery, I am not going to stop half-way. My duty was very clear. When Mr. Cheese came in, I said I felt awkward in asking a servant about his calves, it sounded so queerly. But I confessed that it was necessary. " Yes, the path of duty is not always smooth, dear Mrs. Potiphar. It is often thickly strewn with thorns," said he, as he sank back in the. fautcuil, and put down hS.?, petit verre of Mar- as qui n. Just after he had gone, the new footman was announced. I assure you, although it is ridiculous, I felt quite nervous. But when he came in, I said calmly : "Well, Jam.es, I am glad you have come." "Please ma'am, my name is Henry," said he. I was astonished at his taking me up so, and said, decidedly: " James, the name of my footman is always James. You may call yourself what you please; I shall always call you James." The idea of the man's undertaking to arrange my servants' names for me ! Well, he shovv'ed me his references, which were very good, and I was quite satisfied. But there was the terrible calf business that must be attended to, I put it off a great while, but I had to begin. " Well, James ! " and there I stopped. " Yes, ma'am," said he. " I wish — yes — ah ! " and there I stopped again. " Yes, ma'am," said he. THE NEW LIVERY. •7 " James, I wish you had come in knee-breeches." " Ma'am! " said he, in great surprise. <' In knee-breeches, James," repeated I " What be they, ma'am ? What for, ma am ? " said he, a little frightened, as I thought. "Oh ! nothing, nothing; but — but — " " Yes, ma'am," said James. *' But — but I want to see — to see — " " What, ma'am?" said James. "Your legs," gasped I; and the path 7uas thorny enough, Carrie, I can tell you. I had a terrible time explaining to him what I meant, and all about the liveries, etc. Dear me, what a pity these things are not understood; and then we should never have this trouble about explanations. However, I couldn't make him agree to wear the livery. He said: " I'll try to be a good servant, ma'am, but I cannot put on those things and make a fool of myself. I hope you won't insist, for I am very anxious to get a place." Think of his dictating to me ! I told him that I did not per- mit my servants to impose conditions upon me (that's one of Mrs. Croesus's sayings), that I was willing to pay him good wages and treat him well, but that my James must wear my livery. He looked very sorry, said that he should like the place very much — that he was satisfied with the wages, and was sure he should please me, but he could not put on those things. We v/ere both determined, and so parted. I think we were both sorry; for I should have to go ad through the calf-business again, and he lost a good place. However, Caroline, dear, I have my livery and my footman, and am as good as anybody. It's very splendid when I go to Stewart's to have the red plush and the purple and the white calves springing down to open the door, and to see people look and say, " I wonder who that is ? " And everybody bows so nicely, and the clerks are so polite, rnd Mrs. Gnu is melting with envy on the other side, and Mrs, Croesus goes about saying: "' Dear little woman, that Mrs. Potiphar, but so weak ! Pity, pity ! " And Mrs. Settem Downe says, " Is that the Potiphar livery? Ah, yes ! Mr. Potiphar's grandfather used to shoe my grandfather's horses ! " (as if to be useful in the world were a disgrace — as Mr. P. says); and young Downe and Boosey and 4B MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Timon Croesus come up and stand about so gentlemanly and sa}-, " Well, Mrs. Potiphar, are we to have no more charming parties this season ? " And Boosey says, in his droll way, " Let's keep the ball a-rolling ! " That young man is always ready with a witticism. Then I step out, and James throws open the door, and the young men raise their hats, and the new crowd s.ays: '' I wonder who that is!" and the plush and purple and calves spring up behind, and I drive home to dinner. Now, Carrie, dear, isn't that nice ? CARRIE'S COMEDY. BY WILLIAM LIVINGSTONE ALDEN. TVJILLIAM LIVINGSTONE ALDEN made his reputation as the humorous editor of the New York Times. He was born at Williamstown, Mass., in 1837, received a collegiate education, and then studied law. He has pub- lished some eight volumes, mostly of a humorous character. Dr. Bartholomew, of Towanda Falls, Penn., is the proud possessor of an extremely precocious child. Miss Carrie Bar- tholomew is only ten years old, but, nevertheless, she is a young person of extraordinary acquirements and conspicuous culture. At the age of six she could read with great ease, and before reaching her eighth birthday she had developed a marked taste for novel-reading. About the same period she made her first attempt at authorship, and soon achieved an enviable reputation in several local nurseries, where her fairy tales were recited with immense applause. In her ninth year she wrote a novel — of which, unfortunately, no copies are now in existence — and begun an epic in six books upon "St. Bartholomev/'s Daj^ " — which sanguinary event she classed among the ancestors of her family. The epic was discontinued after the completion of the second book, owing to the premature extermination of the Huguenots, but the young author lashed the Catholic party wnth great vigor, and denounced Charles IX. as the scarlet person mentioned in the Apocalypse. The latest effort of Miss Bartholomew was, in all respects, her crowning work. It was a drama in blank verse and in five acts, CARRIE'S COMEDY. 49 entitled " Robinson Crusoe; or the Exile of Twenty Years," and it was publicly performed in the Baptist lecture-room by a com- pany of children drilled by the author. The proceeds of the entertainment were designed for the conversion of the heathen, and it was attended by a large and hilarious audience. The entire work of mounting the drama fell upon the shoul- ders of the author. The stage was beautifully ornamented with borrowed shawls; and three fire-screens, covered with wall-paper and with tree and flower patterns, did duty as scenery. The cos- tumes were unique and beautiful, and a piano ably played by a grown-up lady supplied the place of an orchestra. The curtain rose at the appointed time, and displayed Cf7isoe in his English home in the act of taking tea with his wife. A cradle in the corner held a young Crusoe — played with much dignity by Miss Bartholomew's best doll — and a wooden dog reposed on the hearth-rug. Crusoe, after finding fault with the amount of sugar in his tea — a touch that was recognized as wonderfully true to life — announced that he was to sail the next morning on a voy- age to South America. Mrs. Crusoe instantly burst into tears, and remarked: " Our wedded life has scarce begun ! But three months since you led me to the altar, And now you leave me, friendless and forlorn !" Crusoe, however, soon comforted his wife, and bidding her teach her surprisingly precipitate infant to revere his absent father, put on his ulster, and after a last passionate embrace, departed for South America. The second act presented Crusoe in his island home, clad chiefly in seal-skin jackets, and much given to pacing the ground and soliloquizing. According to his account, he had now been on the island three years, and was beginning to feel rather lone- seme. He referred in the most affectionate terms to the sole comrade of his joys and sorrows, his gentle goat — which animal, hir^d for the occasion, from a Towanda Falls Irishman, was con- spicuously tethered in the background, and would obviously have butted Crusoe into remote futurity if he could have broken loose. Presently Crusoe heard a faint yell in the distance, and decided that it was made by a cannibal picnic party, whereupon he announced that he would go for his gun and sweep the wicked cannibals into the Gulf. so CARRIE'S COMEDY. 51 Act three was brought to an unexpected but effective climax. It opened with the entrance of a dozen assorted cannibals drag- ging two helpless prisoners, who were securely bound. After an effective war-dance, one of the prisoners was killed with a club, and was placed on a painted fire. Just as the chief cannibal had announced that the dinner was nearly cooked, Crusoe s goat, which had managed to escape from the green-room, burst upon the cannibals. Two of them were knocked over into the audience, where they wept bitterly; others were strewn over the stage, while a remnant escaped behind the scenes. The prisoner, in spite of the fact that he was dead and roasted, fled at the first - onset of the goat, and the curtain was dropped amid wild applause. After the goat had been captured by some male members of the audience, and Crusoe himself had explained that his proposed massacre of the cannibals had been unintentionally anticipated, the stage was set for the fourth act, and the play went on. This particular act was a magnificent proof of the author's originality. The rising of the curtain displayed Crusoe sitting on a grassy bank, surrounded by four children, whom he calmly alleged to be his own. Beyond vaguely alluding to them as the gift of heaven sent to cheer his lonely hours, that astonishing father did not offer to account for their origin. The author's chief object in introducing them was, however, soon disclosed. Friday, who presently appeared, and whose lack of any ostensi- ble origin was doubtless due to the recent interference of the goat, was requested to sit down and undergo instruction in the Westminster Catechism. The scene that followed was closely modeled after the exercises of an ordinary Sunday-school ; and Crusoe s four inexplicable children sang songs to an extent that clearly proved that singing was the object of their remarkable creation. Lest this scene should appear somewhat too solemn, the author judiciously lightened it by the happy expedient of xi^d.Vwig Friday a negro, who constantly said, "Yes ! Massa," and " Yah, yah !" and who always spoke of himself as " dis child." Altogether, the act was a delightful one, and whenever Crusoe alluded to his "dear children," and regretted that they had never seen their dear mamma, the audience howled with rapture. How Crusoe and his interesting family escaped from the island the author omitted to mention. The fifth and last act depicted his arrival home and his final reunion with the bride of his youth. 52 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Mrs. Crusoe was sitting at her original tea-table, precisely a's she was in the habit of doing twenty years earlier, when there was a knock at the door, and Crusoe entered, followed by his four children, and Friday carrying a large carpet-bag and a bundle of shawls. Mutually exclaiming, " 'Tis he!" and " 'Tis she!" the long-separated husband and wife rushed into each other's arms. After the first greetings were over, Crusoe remarking in the most elegant blank verse that though he had brought neither gold nor gems, he had nevertheless returned rich, presented in evidence thereof his four children. Whereupon that noble woman, remark- ing that she, too, had been wonderfully blest, brought in seven children from the next room and told them to kiss their father. After which the drama was brought to a graceful end by the singing of " Home, Sweet Home," by the entire strength of the Crusoe family. For originality and rare dramatic gen"h.ia, it is clear that this play has never been equaled by any previous American drama- tist; and we may be sure Miss Carrie Bartholomew will in future look back upon it with at least as much wonder as pride. TO CORRESPONDENTS. BY HENRY W. SHAW (jOSH BILLINGS). P^ENRY W. SHAW, the vvell -known wit and satirist, "Josh Billings," ( was born at Lanesborough, Mass., in 1818, of a family of politicians, his father and grandfather having both been in Congress. He went early in life to the West, where for twenty-five years he was a farmer and auctioneer. He did not begin to write for publication till he was forty-five years old. He has been one of the most popular of popular lecturers. Mr. Shaw died at Monterey, Cal., Oct. 14, 1885. '■'■ Benzine.'" — Men who hav a grate deal to do with hosses, seem tew demoralize faster than the hosses do. Hosses are like dice, and kards; althothey arevirteuous enuff themselves, how natral it iz tew gambol with them. Hosses luv the society ov man, and being susceptable ov grate deceit, they will learn a man how to cheat and lie before he knows it. TO CORRESPONDENTS. t- -» I know lots ov folks who are real pius, and who are honest enuff tew work up into united estate accessors, and hav sum good-sized moral chunks left over, but when they cum tew fork hoss, they want az mutch look after az a case ov dipthery. '■'■ Benvolio." — In writing for yu an analasiss ov the frog, i must confess that i hav coppied the whole thing, " verbatus ad liberating," from the works ov a selebrated French writer on natural history, ov the i6th sentry. The frog iz, in the fust case, a tadpole, aul boddy and tail, without cuming tew a head. He travels in pond holes, bi the side ov the turnpike, and iz * accellerated bi the acktivity ov his tail, which wriggles with uncommon limberness and vivacity. Bi and bi, pretty soon before long, in a few daze, his tail iz no more, and legs begin to emerge from the south end ov the animal; and from the north end, at the same time, may be seen a disposition tew head out. In this cautious way the frog iz built, and then for the fust time in his life begins tew git his head abuv water. His success iz now certain, and soon, in about five daze more, he may be seen sitting down on himself bi the side ov the pond hole, and looking at the dinner baskets ov the children on their way tew the distrikt skoolhous. Az the children cum more nearer, with a club, or chunk ov a brickbat in his hand tew swott him with, he rares up on his behind leggs, and enters the water, head fust, without opening the door. Thus the frog duz bizzness for a spell of time, until he gits tew be 21, and then his life iz more ramified. Frogs hav 2 naturs, ground and water, and are az free from sin az an oyster. I never knu a frog tew hurt ennyboddy who paid his honest dets and took the daily papers. I don't reckoleckt now whether a frog has enny before leggs or not, and if he don't it ain't enny boddy's bizzness but the frog's. Their hind legs are used for refreshments, but the rest ov him won't pay for eating. A frog iz the only person who kan live in a well, and not git tired. 54 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE WORST MAN AND THE STUPIDEST MAN IN TURKEY. BY Samuel s. cox. OAMUEL SULLIVAN COX was born at Zanesville, O., September 30, 1824, and grew up in his native State. He entered journalistic life after graduating from Brown University, and has achieved distinction in politics as well as literature ; his public services, in Congress and diplomacy, are as well- known as his books. Several years ago the dragoman of our American Legation at Constantinople was asked to act as arbitrator in a dispute between a foreigner and an old Turkish doctor in law and theology. After several meetings with them, the dragoman concluded that the doctor was an ill-natured and unmanageable person. The latter had served for some years as cadi of the Civil Court at Smyrna. The dragoman related a story for his instruction. The story as to its place was in old Stamboul. iVs to its time, it does not matter much. Its moral is for every place and for all time. But it took place at the end of the sixteenth century, when the Turk- ish power was well established and growing. In other words, it was during the reign of Amurath III., the sixth emperor of the Ottomans, and grandson of Suleiman the Magnificent. This Sultan was not, as the sequel of the story shows, the worst of the Ottoman emperors. He was a tall, manly man, rather fat and quite pale, with a thin long beard. His face was not of a fierce aspect, like other Sultans. He was no rioter or reveler. He punished drunkards, and as for himself he indulged only in wormwood wine. His people knew that he loved justice, and although, according to an old chronicle, he caused his brothers to be strangled, " at which so tragicall a sight that he let some teares fall, as not delighting in such barbarous crueltie, but that the state and manner of his gouernment so required," still, he was, as the time was, a good prince. But to the dragoman's story. Its moral had its uses, as the sequel reveals. This is the story, as it was told in one of the leisure hours at the Legation last summer: "There was a man, Mustapha by name, who lived near the THE WORST MAN AND THE STUPIDEST MAN. 55 Golden Gate. He was well off, and when about to die, he called his sou to him and said : '• ' My dear boy, I am dying. Before I go, I want to give you my last will. Here are one hundred pounds. You will give it to the worst man you can find. Here are one hundred pounds more. This you will give to the stupidest man you can discover.' " A few days after, the father died. The son began to search for the bad man. Several men were pointed out, but he was not satisfied tha.t they were the worst of men. Finally he hired a horse and went up to Yosgat, in Asia Minor. There the popula- tion unanimously pointed out their cadi as the worst man to be THE WORST MAN IN TURKEY. found anywhere. This information satisfied the son. He called on the cadi. He told the story of the will, and added: "'As I am desirous that the will of my father be accomplished, I beg you to receive these hundred pounds.' " Said the cadi, ' How do you know that I am so bad as I am represented ? ' " ' It is the testimony of the whole town,' said the son. " 'I must tell you, young man,' said the cadi, 'that it is con- trary to my principles to accept any bribe or present. If I ever receive money, it is only for a con-sid-er-a-tion. Unless I give you the counter-value of your money, I cannot accept it.' 56 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " This reply of the cadi seemed just. It puzzled the young man. Ho^vever, as he desired to fulfill his father's will, he con- tinued to urge the cadi: " ' Mr. Judge,' said he, ' if you sell me something, could not the will of my father be fulfilled ? ' " 'Let me see,' said the cadi, looking around to find out what on earth he could sell to the youth, without destroying the spirit of the will. He reflected for a long time. Then all at once he was struck with a bright idea. Seeing that the courtyard of his. house was filled with snow, about two feet deep, he said to the youth: " < I will sell you yonder snow. Do you accept the bargain P*^ " * Yes,' said the youth, seeing that there was nothing of value in the snow. " The cadi then executed a regular deed, the fees of which were paid, of course, by the purchaser. The son then paid the hundred pounds for the snow. ''The boy went home; but he was not quite certain that he had strictly fulfilled the will of his father; for, after all, the cadi did not appear to him to be so very bad. Had he not decidedly refused to accept the money without a legal consideration? " His perplexity was of short duration. " The second day, early in the morning, the scribe of the cadi called on the youth and told him that the cadi wished to see him. " 'Well, I will go,' said the youth. "'No,' said the scribe; ' I am ordered to take you there.' "The youth resisted, and the scribe insisted. Finally the youth was compelled to submit, and went, I " ' What do you want of me. Cadi Effendi,' said the boy. "'Ah! you are welcome,' responded the cadi; 'I wanted you to come, because you have some snow in the courtyard which bothers me a great deal. The authorities cannot shoulder such a responsibility. Is not the deposit exposed? Can it be put under lock like other property ? Besides, does it not occupy the road, to which the people have the right of easement? What follows ? The result is, that your snow will be trampled or stolen, or it will melt, and then all the responsibility will rest on me. I am not prepared to assume it. I request you to carry away your snow. ' '"But, Cadi Effendi,' said the boy, 'I do not care. Let it THE IVORS! MAN AND THE STUPIDEST MAN. 57 melt ; let it be stolen ; let it be trampled on ; I will make no claim for its value.' " 'Nothing of the kind,' said the cadi. 'You have no right to close the public way in that manner. Unless you take away your snow, I will confine you in prison, and make you answer for the nuisance, and for the decay of the property, which may be claimed by your heirs at some future time.' '"Let it be swept out,' said the youth; 'I will defray the expense.' "'Nonsense!' indignantly responded the cadi. 'Am I your servant ? Besides, will it not take a great deal of money to have the snow swept out ? ' '"I will pay the expense, whatever it is,' said the youth. " 'Well, it requires twenty pounds,' said the cadi. " ' I will pay that sum,' said the youth. " Thus the cadi squeezed out twenty pounds more^ from the son of the deceased. " The youth is, however, content. He is glad to find in this cadi a man of the meanness so indispensable to the fulfillment of the will of his father. " After this experience the youth goes in search of the stupid mar. He must filially fulfill the second clause of the will. "While engaged in this search for stupidity, the son limits his efforts to his own fair city of Stamboul. He is on the street leading up to the Sublime Porte. He hears a band of music. It is moving toward the Sublime Porte. He is curious to know what it all means. He walks toward the music. When at a short distance he discovers a grand procession, with a display of sol- diers. He notices a comparatively old man riding a white Arabian horse. He is dressed in a magnificent uniform. His breast is covered with decorations of every size, color and description. The trappings of the horse are covered with gold embroideries. The old man is surrounded by a dozen high officials of the gov- ernment of Amurath HI. They, too, are dressed finely ; they have recently returned from the Caucasus laden with riches, and they display their grand robes and jewels. They have gorgeously embroidered uniforms and ride splendid horses. They are fol- lowed by an immense crowd. All Galata, as well as Stamboul, is afoot to see the sight. Murmurs in threescore dialects rise on 58 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. the sunny air. The son of Mustapha follows the crowd. He asks a pedestrian in a green turban, who sits by the fountain: " ' What is the procession about ? ' " He is informed that the old man is the newly appointed Grand Vizier of Amurath. The Vizier is going to take posses- sion of his post. He is thus escorted with the usual solemnity. "When the procession arrives at the gate of the Sublime Porte, the Grand Vizier dismounts on the foot-stone in front of the entrance, and, strange to say, there on that very foot-stone is a big tray; and on the tray, a human head freshly decapitated. '< The sight is blood-curdling. The youth is struck dumb with horror. Then, recovering his senses, he iinds out the mean- ing of the usage. He is told that the bloody head is that of the preceding Grand Vizier, who had acted wrongfully, and was therefore beheaded. " ' Will his successor succeed him in the tray also ? ' asks the youth, of a zaptieh who was standing near to police the procession, " ' Nowadays it is difficult to escape it,' is the answer of the policeman. " After this answer, the youth makes immediate inquiries. He discovers the ' Kiahaja ' of the new Grand Vizier, for every Grand Vizier has a factotum. He goes to the Kiahaja and requests him to deliver to the Grand Vizier the hundred pounds which his father had willed. The Kiahaja, after inquiring the name of the youth and his whereabouts, receives the money. Later on, he takes the hundred pounds to the Grand Vizier, This high official is puzzled. " ' Who,' he inquires, * is the friend that left the money to me, and why ? ' " He calls for the youth. The youth comes. The Grand Vizier asks him about his father. The boy replies : " ' His name was Mustapha. He lived near the Golden Gate ; but you did not know him, my lord ! ' '^ ' But he knew me ? ' " ' No, my lord, he did not. ' " ' Then why this bequest to me ? " The youth then gives the Grand Vizier the story, and adds that he could not expect to find a more stupid man or a greater idiot than the Grand Vizier ; therefore, he concludes that the hundred pounds are due to that official, under his father's will. THE WORST MAN AND THE STUPIDEST MAN. ^Q " This puzzles the Grand Vizier, who says : " ' How do you know that I am a stupid man ? Neither you nor your father knew me. ' " < Your acceptance of the position of Grand Vizier,' says the youth, ' in the presence of the dead head of your predecessor, speaks for itself. It needs no explanation.' "The Grand Vizier can make no rational answer. He takes hold of his beard, strokes it, and considers for a minute. " Then he says to the youth : ' Son of the good and wise Mus- tapha, will you not be my guest for to-night ? To-morrow morn- ing I must talk with you.' The boy accepts the invitation. *^ '•' In the morning the Grand Vizier calls the youth. He in- forms him that he is going to the palace of Amurath at the Seraglio Point. He desires the youth to accompany him. The boy objects. It is no use. The Grand Vizier compels him to go with him. "They reach the palace. The Grand Vizier goes straight- way to the Chief Eunuch, and thus addresses that beautiful Arabian : " ' Your Highness : I am aware that His Majesty, in bestow- ing on me the responsible and confidential position of Grand Vizier, did me the greatest honor a man can ever expect in this world. I am grateful to him for such a rare distinction. But, . Highness, here is a young man who came to see me yesterday, and spoke to me in such a wonderful way that I feel bound to tender my resignation. After my conversation with him, I feel incapable of sustaining the dignity which His Majesty deserves.' " The Eunuch is thunderstruck. Up to that time no Grand Vizier had ever dared to resign. But the action of the Vizier seems so strange to the Eunuch, that the latter at once goes and reports it to the Sultan. The Sultan is amazed and indignant. He demands the presence of the Grand Vizier and the youth. When they appear they find that Amurath is not in one of his best moods. The Janizaries have been threatening him. His wife, sister and mother, on whom he relies for comfort in his poor health and mental distress, have in vain endeavored to placate and pacify him. His pale face grows scarlet with anger. He hotly addresses the Grand Vizier : " ' How is it, sirrah ! that you presume to dare to tender your resignation ?' 6o MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " 'Your Majesty,' says the Grand Vizier, ' I know that I am doing a bold act ; but it is this boy,' pointing out the simple youth, ' who compels me to do it. If your Highness wants to know the reasons, the boy will give them to you. I am sure that after hearing them you will acknowledge that, as I am con- sidered the most stupid man in your empire, it is not becoming to your dignity to retain me as your immediate representative.' ** The boy is then called. He gives his story. The Sultan smiles. His innate sense of justice returns. He issues an irade that henceforth no Grand Vizier shall be beheaded." FIRST-CLASS SNAKE STORIES. Brooklyn Eagle. " Do you want some items about snakes ? " asked an agricul- turally-rural-looking gentleman of the Eagles city editor the other day. " If they are fresh and true," responded the city editor. "Exactly," replied the farmer. "These items are both. No- body knows 'em but me. I got a farm down on the island a piece, and there's lots of snakes on it. Near the house is a pond, about six feet deep. A week ago my little girl jumped into the pond, and would have drowned if it hadn't been for a snake. The snake seen her, went for her, and brought her ashore. The particular point about this item is the way he did it." " How was it?" asked the city editor. ** It was a black snake, about thirty feet long, and he just coiled the middle of himself around her neck so she couldn't swallow any water, and swum ashore with his head and tail. Is that a good item ? " "First-class." " You can spread it out, you know. After they got ashore the girl patted the snake ofz the head, and it went off pleased as Punch. Ever since then he comes to the house regular at meal-times, and she feeds him on pie. Think you can make anything out of that item?" FIRST-CLASS SNAKE S TORIES. 6i <' Certainly. Know any more ? " " Yes. I got a baby six months old. He's a boy. We gener- ally sit him out on the grass of a morning, and he hollers like a bull all day; at least he used to, but he don't any more. One morning we noticed he wasn't hollering^ and wondered what was up. When we looked, there was a rattlesnake coiled up in front of him scanning his features. The boy was grinning and the snake was grinning. Bimeby the snake turned his tail to the baby and backed his rattle right into the baby's fist." " What did the baby do ? " <'Why, he just rattled that tail so you could hear it three- quarters of a mile, and the snake lay there and grinned. Every morning w^e found the snake there, until one day a bigger snake came, and the baby played with his rattle A NOVEL BATTLE. just the same till the first snake came back. He looked thin, and I reckon he had been sick and sent the other to take his place. Will that do for an item ?" " Immensely," replied the city editor. " You can fill in about the confidence of childhood and all that, and you might say something about the blue-eyed cherub. His name is Isaac. Put that in to please my wife." "I'll do it. Any more snake items ? " " Lemme see. You've heard of hoop-snakes ? " "Yes, often." " Just so. Not long ago we heard a fearful row in our cellar 62 MARK TWALVS LIBRARY OF HUMOR. one night. It sounded like a rock-blast, and then there was a hiss and things was quiet. When I looked in the morning the cider barrel had busted. But we didn't lose much cider." " How did you save it ? " " It seems that the staves had busted out, but before they could get away, four hoop- snakes coiled around the barrel and tight- ened it up and held it together until we drew the cider off in bottles. That's the way we found 'em, and we've kept 'em around the house ever since. We're train- ing 'em for shawl- straps now. Does that strike you favorably for an item ? " "Enormously!" responded the city editor. "You can fix it up so as to show how quick they was to get there before the staves were blown off. You can work in the details." "Of course. I'll attend to that. Do you think of any more ? " " Ain't you got enough ? Lemme think. O yes ! One Sunday me and my wife was gomg to church, and she dropped her garter somewhere. She told me about it, and I noticed a little striped snake running alongside and listening to her. Bimeby he made a spring and just wound himself around her stocking, or tried to, but he didn't fetch it." " Why not ? " " He wasn't quite long enough. He jumped down and shook his head and started off. We hadn't gone more'n a quarter of a THE GARTER SNAKE. FIRST-CLASS SNAKE STORIES. ^•> mile, when we see him coming out of the woods just ahead of us. He was awful hot and tired, and he had another snake with him twice as big as he was. They looked at my wife a minute and said something to each other, and then the big snake went right to the place where the garter belonged. He wrapped right around it, put his tail in his mouth and went to sleep. We got him yet. We use him to hold the stovepipe together when we put the stove up. Is that any use as an item ?" "Certainly," said the city editor. " You can say something about the first snake's eye for dis- tances and mtellectuality, when he found- he wouldn't go 'round. You know how to do that better than me." " ni give him the credit he deserves. Can you tell us any more ? " "I don't call any to mind just at present. My wife knows a lot of snake items, but I forget 'em. By the way, though, I've got a regular living curiosity down at my place, de day my oldest boy was sitting on the back stoop doing his sums, and he couldn't get 'em right. He felt something against his face, and there was a little snake coiled up on his shoulder and looking at the slate. In four minutes he had done all them sums. We've tamed him so he keeps all our accounts, and he is the lighteningest cuss at figures you ever seen. He'll run up a column eight feet long in three seconds. I wouldn't take a reaper for him.'' " What kind of a snake is he?" inquired the editor, curiously. " The neighbors call him an adder." ** O, yes, yes ! " said the city editor, a little disconcerted. "I've heard of the species. When did all these things happen?" " Along in the fore part of the spring, but I didn't say any- thing about 'em, 'cause it wasn't ±e season for snake items. This is about the time for that sort of thing, isn't it ? " "Yes," chipped in the exchange editor, "you couldn't have picked out a better time for snake stories." 04 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. HIS FIRST DAY AT EDITING. BY EUGENE FIELD. ^T'UGENE FIELD, journalist, was born in Boston, Mass., in 1S50. He re- ceived a classical education, settled in Chicago, and engaged in journalism on the Chicago Neius. He has published "Culture's Garland " (Ticknor & Co,, Boston, Mass., 18S7), several fairy tales, poems, and a number of dramatic criticisms, including one on Modjeska that is widely and favorably known. Yesterday morning, Mr. Horace A. Hurlbut took formal pos- session of The Chicago Times, in compliance witli the mandate of justice making him receiver of that institution. Bright and early he was at his post in The Times building; and the e.\pression that coursed over his mobile features, as he l-olled back in the editorial chair and abandoned himself to pleasing reflections, was an expression of conscious pride and ineffable satisfaction. " I have now attained the summit and the goal of earthly ambition," quoth Mr. Hurlbut to himself.. "Embarking in the drug-business at an early age, I have progressed through the in- termediate spheres of real estate, brokerage and money-lending, until finally I have reached the top round of the ladder of fame, and am now the head of the greatest daily newspaper on the American continent. I expect and intend to prove myself equal to the demands which will be made upon me in this new capacity. I have my own notions about journalism — they differ somewhat from the conventional notions that prevail, but that is neither here nor there; for, as the dictator of this great news- paper, I shall have no difficulty in putting my theories into practice." •' Here's the mornin' mail, major," said the office-boy, laying innumerable packages of letters and circulars on the table before Mr. Hurlbut. "Why do you call me major?" inquired Mr. Hurlbut, with an amused twinkle in his eyes. " Oh ! we always call the editors majors," replied the ofiice- boy. " Major Dennett made that a rale longtime ago." " It is not a bad idea," said Major Hurlbut, " for it gives one a dignity and prestige which can never maintain among untitled civilians. So this is the morning mail, is it ? " HIS FIRST DAY AT EDITING. 6 e Major Hurlbut picked up one of the letters, scrutinized the superscription, heaved a deep sigh, picked up several other letters, blushed, frowned, and appeared much embarrassed. " Can you tell me," he asked, " whether there are any reporters about this ofifice by the names, or aliases, or nom de plume, or pseudonym of ' M n^ and ' X 14,' or • S 5,' or ' G 38 ' ? I find numerous letters directed in this wise, and I mistrust that some unseemly work is being done under cover of these bogus appella- tions. I will make bold to examine one of these letters." So Major Hurlbut tore open one of the envelopes, and read as follows : "G38, Times O'&.zq: I have a nice, quiet, furnished room. Call after eight o'clock p. m., at No. 1143 Elston Road." "As I suspected," cried Major Hurlbut, with a profound groan. "Under these strange pseudonyms, the reporters of this paper are engaging in a carnival of vice ! But the saturnalia must end at once. From this moment The Tunes becomes a moral institution. I shall ascertain the names of these reporters, and have them peremptorily discharged ! " " H'yar's a package for you, sah," said the duslcy porter, Martin Lewis, entering, and placing a small bundle before Major Hurlbut. " Ah, yes ! I see," quoth the major, " they are the new cards I ordered last Saturday. We editors have to have cards, so as to let people know we are editors." With this philosophic observation, the major opened the bundle, and disclosed several hundred neat pasteboard cards, printed in red and black as follows : HORACE A. HURLBUT, Receiver and Editor, ' ' Chicago Times." Real Estate A Specialty. Drug Orders Promptly Filled. Loans Negotiated without Publicity. "They are very handsome," said Major Hurlbut, '^ but I am sorry I did not have the title of Major prefixed to my name. 66 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. However, I will take that precaution with the next lot I have printed." " Majah Dennett would like to speak with you, sah," said Martin, the porter. " Although I am very busy with this mail, you may show him in," remarked Major Hurlbut. Major Dennett pigeon-toed his way into the new editor's presence, and was loftily waved to a chair, in which he dropped, and sat with his toes turned in. Major Hurlbut heaved a weary sigh, ran his fingers through his hair, and regarded his visitor with a condescending stare. *' This is a busy hour with us editors," said Major Hurlbut, "therefore I hope you will state your business as succinctly as possible." "I merely called to receive orders," explained Major Dennett, with an astonished look. " Orders for what ? " cried Major Hurlbut. '■'■ Perhaps you forget, sir, that I am out of the drug business, and am an editor. Permit me, sir, to hand you one of my professional cards." "You mistake me, sir," replied Major Dennett; "I am con- nected with this paper, and have been managing editor for years." Major Hurlbut' s manner changed instantly. His cold reserve melted at once, and he became docile as a sucking-dove. "My dear Major," he exclaimed cordially, " I am overjoyed to meet you. Draw your chair closer, and let us converse together upon matters which concern us both. Each of us has the interests of this great paper at heart; but I, as the head of the institution, have a fearful responsibility resting upon my shoulders. It behooves you to assist me ; and, as the first and most important step, I must beg of you to inform me what is expected of me as an editor. I am willing and anxious to edit, but how can I ?" Major Dennett undertook to explain a few of the duties which would fall upon the editor's shoulders, and would have continued talking all day, had not the venerable Major Andre Matteson been ushered into the room, thereby interrupting the conversa- tion. Upon being formally introduced to the new editor, Major Matteson inquired what the policy of The Times would be hence- forward touching the tariff, the civil service, the war in the Soudan, and the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. HIS FIRST DAY AT EDITING. 67 " I have not decided fully what the policy of the paper will be in these minor matters," quoth Major Hurlbut, " except that we shall favor the abolition of the tariff on quinine, cochineal, and other drugs and dyestuffs. I have made up my mind, however, to advocate the opening of a boulevard in Fleabottom subdivi- sion ; and, as you are one of the editorial writers. Major Matte- son, I would like to have you compose a piece about the folly of extending the Thirtieth Street sewer through the Bosbyshell sub- division. And you may give the firm of Brown, Jones & Co. a raking over, for they have seriously interfered with the sale of my lots out in that part of the city." Major George McConnell and Major Guy Magee filed into the room at this juncture, and were formally presented to P HIS FIRST DAY AT EDITING. editor Hurlbut, who looked impressive, and received them with a dignity that would have done credit to a pagan court. " I had hoped to be in a position to boom the city department of the paper," said Major Magee, " but I find that three of the reporters are sick with headache to-day." " Sick ? What appears to be the matter ? " asked the editor. "Idid'nt ask them," replied Major Magee ; "but they said they had headaches." " They should try bromide of potassium, tincture of valerian, and aromatic spirits of ammonia," observed Major Hurlbut. " By the way, whenever any of our editors or reporters get sick, they should come to me ; for I can give them prescriptions that will fix them up in less than no time." 68 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " I presume the policy of the paper touching the theatres will remain unchanged ? " inquired Major McConnell. "That reminds me," said Major Hurlbut : "who gets the show-tickets ? " "Well, I have attended to that detail heretofore," replied Major McConnell. "We get as manj^ as we want, don't we ?" asked Major Hurlbut. " Certainly," said Major McConnell. " Well, then, we must give the shows good notices," said the editor ; " and, by the way, I would like to have you leave six tickets with me every morning ; they will come in mighty handy, you know, among friends. Do we get railroad-passes too ? "Yes, all we want," said Major Dennett. " I am glad I am an editor," said Major Hurlbut, softly but feelingly. The foreman came in. " Shall we set it in nonpareil to-night ? " he asked. " Eh ? " ejaculated Editor Hurlbut. " Does nonpareil go?" repeated the foreman. " What has he been doing ? " inquired Editor Hurlbut. *' The minion is so bad that we ought to put the paper in non- pareil," exclaimed the foreman. " It must be understood," thundered Major Hurlbut, "that no bad minions will be tolerated on the premises. If there is any minion here who is dissatisfied, let him quit at once." "Then I am to fire the minion ? " asked the foreman. "No," said Major Hurlbut, "do not fire him, for that would constitute arson ; discharge him, but use no violence." We deeply regret that this astute mandate was followed by an interchange of sundry smiles, nods and winks between the fore- man and the members of the editorial staff, which, however, Major Hurlbut did not see, or he most assuredly would have reproved this unseemly and mal-apropos levity. And so they talked and talked. And each moment Major Hurlbut became more and more impressed with the importance and solemnity of the new dignity he had attained, and each moment he became more and more impressive in his mien and conversation. And each moment, too, he silently and devoutly thanked High Heaven that in its goodness and mercy it had called him to the ennobling profession of journalism. 69 ABE LARD AND HE LOIS E. ABELARD AND HELOISE BY MARK TWAIN. Among the thousands and thousands of tombs in Pere la Chaise, there is one that no man, no woman, no youth of either sex ever passes by without stopping to examine. Every visitor has a sort of indistinct idea of the history of its dead, and com- prehends that homage is due there, but not one in twenty thou- sand clearly remembers the story of that tomb and its romantic occupants. This is the grave of Abelard and Heloise — a grave which has been more revered, more widely known, more written and sung about and wept over for seven hundred years than any other in Christendom, save only that of the Saviour. All visitors linger pensively about it; all young people capture and carry away keepsakes and mementoes of it; all Parisian youths and maidens who are disappointed in love come there to bail out when they are full of tears; yea, many stricken lovers make pilgrimages to this shrine from distant provinces to weep and wail and "grit" their teeth over their heavy sorrows, and to purchase the sympa- thies of the chastened spirits of that tomb with offerings of immor- telles and budding flowers. Go when you will, you find somebody snuffling over that tomb. Go when you will, you find it furnished with tboj;e bouquets and immortelles. Go when you will, you find a gravel-train from Marseilles arriving to supply the deficiencies caused by memento- cabbaging vandals whose affections have miscarried. Yet who really knows the story of Abelard and Heloise? Precious few people. The names are _ perfectly familiar to everybody, and that is about all. With infinite pains I have acquired a knowledge of that history, and I propose to narrate it here, partly for the honest information of the public, and partly to show that public that they have been wasting a good deal of marketable sentiment very unnecessarily. STORY OF ABELARD AND HELOISE. Heloise was born seven hundred and sixt)'--six years ago. She may have had parents. There is no telling. She lived with her uncle Fulbert, a canon of the Cathedral of Paris. I do not know 70 M4RK TWAIN'S LIBRARY CF HUMOR. what a canon of a cathedral is, but that is what he was. He was nothing more than a sort of mountain howitzer, likely; because they had no heavy artillery in those days. Suffice it, then, that Heloise lived with her uncle, the howitzer, and was happy. She spent the most of her childhood in the convent of Argenteuil. (Never heard of Argenteuil before, but suppose there was really such a place.) She then returned to her uncle, the old gun — or son of a gun, as the case may be — and he taught her to write and speak Latin, which was the language of literature and polite society at that period. Just at this time Pierre Abelard, who had already made him- self widely famous as a rhetorician, came to found a school of rhetoric in Paris. The originality of his principles, his eloquence, and his great physical strength and beauty created a profound sensation. He saw Heloise, and was captivated by her blooming youth, her beauty and her charming disposition. He wrote to her; she answered. He wrote again; she answered again. He was now in love. He longed to know her — to speak to her face to face. Plis school was near Fulbert's house. He asked Fulbert to allow him to call. The good old swivel saw here a rare oppor- tunity; his niece, whom he so much loved, would absorb knowl- edge from this man, and it would not cost him a cent. Such was Fulbert — penurious. Fulbert's first name is not mentioned by any author, which is unfortunate. However, George W. Fulbert will answer for him as well as any other. We will let him go at that. He asked Abe- lard to teach her. Abelard was glad enough of the opportunity. He came often and stayed long. A letter of his shows in its very first sentence that he came under that friendly roof like a cold-hearted villain, as he was, with the deliberate intention of debauching a confid- ing, innocent o-irl. This is the letter: " I cannot cease to be astonished at the simplicity of Fulbert ; I was as much surprised as if he had placed a lamb in the power of a hungry wolf. Heloise and I, under pretext of study, gave ourselves up wholly to love, and the solitude that love seeks our studies procured for us. Books were open before us ; but we spoke oftener of love than philosophy, and kisses came more readily from our lips than words." And so, exulting over an honorable confidence, which, to his / ABE LARD AND HELOISE. 71 degrading instinct, was a ludicrous " simplicity," this unmanly Abelard seduced the niece of the man whose guest he was. Paris found it out. Fulbert was told of it — told often — but refused to believe it. He could not comprehend how a man could be so depraved as to use the sacred protection and security of hospi- tality as a means for the commission of such a crime as that. But when he heard the rowdies in the streets singing the love- songs of Abelard to Heloise, the case was too plain — love-sono-s come not properly within the teachings of rhetoric and philosophy. He drove Abelard from his house. Abelard returned secretly and carried Heloise away to Palais, in Brittany, his native country. Here, shortly afterward, she bore a son, who, from his rare beauty, was surnamed Astro- labe— William G. The girl's flight enraged Fulbert, and he longed for vengeance, but feared to strike lest retalia- tion visit Heloise — for he still loved her tenderly. At length Abelard offered to marry Heloise, but on a shameful condition : that the marriage should be kept secret fror that (while her good name remained a wreck, as before) his priestly reputation might be kept untarnished. It was like that miscreant. Fulbert saw his opportunity, and consented. He would see the parties married, and then vio- late the confidence of the man who had taught him that trick; he would divulge the secret, and so remove somewhat of the obloquy that attached to his niece's name. But the niece sus- pected his scheme. She refused the marriage, at first; she said Fulbert would betray the secret to save her; and, besides, she did not wish to drag down a lover who was so gifted, so honored by the world, and who had such a splendid career before him. It 72 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. was noble, self-sacrificing love, and characteristic of the pure- souled Heloise, but it was not good sense. But she was overruled, and the private marriage took place. Now for Fulbert. The heart so wounded should be healed at last; the proud spirit so tortured should find rest again; the humbled head should be lifted up once more. He proclaimed the marriage in the high places of the city, and rejoiced that dishonor had departed from his house. But lo ! Abelard denied the marriage ! Heloise denied it ! The people, knowing the former circumstances, might have believed Fulbert, had only Abelard denied it, but when the person chiefly interested — the girl herself — denied it, they laughed despairing Fulbert to scorn. The poor canon of the Cathedral of Paris w^as spiked again. The last hope of repairing the wrong that had been done his house was gone. What next ? Human nature suggested revenge. He compassed it. The historian says: *• Ruffians, hired by Fulbert, fell upon Abelard by night, and inflicted upon Tiim a terrible and nameless mutilation." I am seeking the last resting-place of those '' ruffians." When I find it I shall shed some tears on it, and stack up some bou- quets and immortelles, and cart away from it some gravel whereby to remember that, howsoever blotted by crime their lives may have been, these ruffians did one just deed, at any rate, albeit it was not warranted by the strict letter of the law. Heloise entered a convent, and gave good-bye to the world and its pleasures for all time. For twelve years she never heard of Abelard — never even heard his name mentioned. She had become prioress of Argenteuil, and led a life of complete seclu- sion. She happened one day to see a letter written by him, in which he narrated his own history. She cried over it, and wrote him. He answered, addressing her as his '< sister in Christ." They continued to correspond, she in the unweighed language of unwavering affection, he in the chilly phraseology of the pol- ished rhetorician. She poured out her heart in passionate, dis- jointed sentences; he replied with finished essays, divided deliberately in heads and sub-heads, premises and argument. She showered upon him the tenderest epithets that love could devise; he addressed her from the North Pole of his frozen heart as the " Spouse of Christ !" The abandoned villain \ ABELARD AND HELOISE. 73 On account of her too easy government of her nuns, some dis- reputable irregularities were discovered among them, and the Abbot of St. Denis broke up her establishment. Abelard was the official head of the monastery of St. Gildas de Ruys at that time, and when he heard of her homeless condition a sentiment of pity was aroused in his breast (it is a wonder the unfamiliar emotion did not blow his head off), and he placed her and her troop in the little oratory of the Paraclete, a religious establish- ment which he had founded. She had many privations and sufferings to undergo at first, but her worth and her gentle dis- position won influential friends for her, and she built up a wealthy and flourishing nunnery. She became a great favorite with the heads of the Church, and also the people, though she seldom appeared in public. She rapidly advanced in esteem, in good report and in usefulness, and Abelard as rapidly lost ground. The Pope so honored her that he made her the head of her order. Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and ranking as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute and distrustful of his powers. He only needed a great misfortune to topple him from the high position he held in the world of intellectual excel- lence, and it came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle St. Bernard in debate and crush him, he stood up in the presence of a royal and illustrious assemblage, and when his antagonist had finished, he looked about him and stammered a commencement; but his courage failed him, the cunning of his tongue was gone; with his speech unspoken, he trembled and sat down, a disgraced and vanquished champion. He died a nobody, and was buried at Cluny, a. d. 1144. They removed his body to the Paraclete afterward, and when Heloise died, twenty years later, they buried her with him, in accordance with her last wish. He died at the ripe age of 64, and she at 63. After the bodies had remained entombed three hundred years, they were removed once more. They were removed again in 1800, and, finally, seventeen years afterward, they were taken up and transferred to Pere la Chaise, where they will remain in peace and quiet until it comes time for them to get up and move again. History is silent concerning the last acts of the mountain how- itzer. Let the world say what it will about him, / at least shall always respect the memory, and sorrow for the abused trust and 74 MARK TWAIN'S UBRARY OF HUMOR. the broken heart and the troubled spirit of the old smooth-bore. Rest and repose be his ! Such is the story of Abelard and Heloise. Such is the history that Lamartine has shed such cataracts of tears over. But that man never could come within the influence of a subject in the least pathetic without overflowing his banks. He ought to be dammed — or leveed, I should more properly say. Such is the history — not as it is usually told, but as it is when stripped of the nauseous sentimentality that would enshrine for our loving wor- ship a dastardly seducer like Pierre Abelard. I have not a word to say against the misused, faithful girl, and would not withhold from her grave a single one of those simple tributes which blighted youths and maidens offer to her memory, but lam sorry enough that I have not time and opportunity to write four or five volumes of my opinion of her friend, the founder of the Para- chute, or the Paraclete, or whatever it was. The tons of sentiment I have wasted on that unprincipled humbug in my ignorance ! I shall throttle down my emotions hereafter, about this sort of people, until I have read them up, and know whether they are entitled to any tearful attentions or not. I wish I had my immortelles back, now, and that bunch of radishes. A FAMILY HORSE. BY F. W. COZZENS. O W . COZZENS, author of the ' ' Sparrowgrass Papers," which first appeared in Putnam^ s Magazine in 1856, and gave him immediate reputation, was born at New York in 1818, and spent his life in that city and its neighborhoods, dying in 1869. He was the author of a charming book of travel in Nova Scotia, "Acadia," and of many humorous sketches and magazine papers, as well as a number of pecuHarly lovely poems. These productions were the fruit of such leisure as he could find amidst the cares of his business, which was that of a wine merchant. "It rains very hard," said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, looking out of the window next morning. Sure enough, the rain was sweepmg broadcast over the country, and the four Sparrowgrassii were flattening a quartette of noses against the window-panes, believ- A FAMILY HORSE. 75 ing most faithfully the man would bring the horse that belonged to his brother, in spite of the elements. It was hoping against hope: no man having a horse to sell will trot him out in a rain- storm, unless he intend to sell him at a bargain — but childhood is so credulous ! The succeeding morning was bright, however, and down came the horse. He had been very cleverly groomed, and looked pleasant under the saddle. The man led him back and forth before the door. " There, squire, 's as good a hos as ever stood on iron." Mrs. Sparrowgrass asked me what he meant by that. I replied, it was a figurative way of expressing, in horse-talk, that he was as good a horse as ever stood in shoe- leather. "He's a handsome hos, squire," said the man. I replied that he did seem to be a good-looking animal, but, said I, " he does not quite come up to the description of a horse I have read." Whose hos was it?" said he. I replied it was the horse of Adonis. He said he didn't know him, but, he added, "there is so many bosses stolen, that the descriptions are stuck up now pretty common." To put him at his ease (for he seemed to think I suspected him of having stolen the horse), I told him the de- scription I meant had been written some hundreds of years ago by Shakespeare, and repeated it "Round-hooft, short-joynted, fetlocks shag and long, Broad brest, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, strait legs, and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide." "Squire," said he, "that will do for a song, but it ain't no p'ints of a good hos. Trotters nowadays go in all shapes, big heads and little heads, big eyes and little eyes, short ears or long ones, thick tail and no tail; so as they have sound legs, good Tin, good barrel, and good stifle, and wind, squire, and speed well, they'll fetch a price. Now, this animal is what I call a hos, squire; he's got the p'ints, he's stylish, he's close-ribbed, a free goer, kind in harness — single or double — a good feeder." I asked him if being a good feeder was a desirable quality. He replied it was; " of course," said he, "if your hos is off his feed, he ain't good for nothin'. But what's the use," he added, "of me tellin' you the p'ints of a good hos ? You're a hos man, squire: you know" — "It seems to me," said I, "there is something the matter with that left eye." " No, sir" said he, 76 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. and with that he pulled down the norse's head, and, rapidly crooking his forefinger at the suspected organ, said, " See thar — don't wink a bit." "But he should wink," I replied. " Not onless his eye are weak," he said. To satisfy myself, I asked the man to let me take the bridle. He did so, and so soon as I took hold of it the horse started off in a remarkable retrograde movement, dragging me with him into my best bed of hybrid roses. Finding we were trampling down all the best plants, that had cost at auction from three-and-sixpence to seven shilling apiece, and that the more I pulled, the more he backed, I finally let him have his own way, and jammed him stern-foremost into /. A GOOD HORSE. our largest climbing rose that had been all summer prickling itself, in order to look as much like a vegetable porcupine as possible. This unexpected bit of satire in his rear changed his retrograde movement to a side-long bound, by which he flirted off half the pots on the balusters, upsetting my gladioluses and tube-roses in the pod, and leaving great splashes of mold, gera- niums and red pottery in the gravel walk. By this time his owner had managed to give him two pretty severe cuts with the whip, which made him unmanageable, so I let him go. We had a pleasant time catching him again, when he got among the Lima bean-poles; but his owner led him back with a very self-satisfied A FAMILY HORSE. 77 expression. ^'Playful, ain't he, squire?" I replied that I thought he was, and asked him if it was usual for his horse to play such pranks. He said it was not. "You see, squire, he feels his oats, and hain't been out of the stable for a month. Use him, and he's as kind as a kitten." With that he put his foot in the stirrup, and mounted. The animal really looked very well as he moved around the grass plot, and, as Mrs. Sparrowgrass seemed to fancy him, I took a written guarantee that he was sound, and bought him. What I gave for him is a secret; I have not even told Mrs. Sparrowgrass. It is a mooted point whether it is best to buy your horse before you build your stable, or build your stable before you buy your horse. A horse without a stable is like a bishop without a church. Our neighbor, who is very ingenious, built his stable to fit his horse. He took the length of his horse and a little over, as the measure of the depth of his stable; then he built it. He had a place beside the stall for his Rockaway carriage. When he came to put the Rockaway in, he found he had not allowed for the shafts! The ceiling was too low to allow them to be erected, so he cut two square port-holes in the back of his stable and run his shafts through them, into the chicken-house behind. Of course, whenever he wanted to take out his carriage, he had to unroost all his fowls, who would sit on the shafts, night and day. But that was better than building a new stable. For my part, I determined to avoid mistakes by getting the horse and carriage both first, and then to build the stable. This plan, being acceptable to Mrs. Sparrowgrass, was adopted, as judicious and expedient. In consequence, I found myself with a horse on my hands, with no place to put him. Fortunately, I was acquainted with a very honest man who kept a livery stable, where I put him to board by the month, and in order that he might have plenty of good oats, I bought some, which I gave to the ostler for that purpose. The man of whom I bought the horse did not deceive me when he represented him as a great feeder. He ate more oats than all the rest of the horses put together in that stable. It is a good thing to have a saddle-horse in the country. The early morning ride, when dawn and dew freshen and flush the landscape, is comparable to no earthly innocent pleasure. Look at yonder avenue of road-skirting trees. Those marvelous ^8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. trunks, yet moist, are ruddy as obelisks of jasper! And above- see the leaves blushing at the east! Hark to the music! inter- minable chains of melody linking earth and sky with its delicious magic. The little, countless wood-birds are singing! and now rolls up from the mown meadow the fragrance of cut grass and clover. " JNTo print of sheep-track yet hath crushed a flower; The spider's woof with silvery dew is hung As it was beaded ere the daylight hour: The hooked bramblejust as it was strung. When on each leaf the night her crystals flung, Then hurried off, the dawning to elude." 4: * » * * '• The rutted road did never seem so clean, There is no dust upon the way-side thorn, For every bud looks out as if but newly born." Look at the river with its veil of blue mist! and the grim, gaunt old Palisades, as amiable in their orient crowns as old princes, out of the direct line of succession, over the royal cradle of the heir apparent! There is one thing about early riding in the country; you find out a great many things which, perhaps, you would not have found out under ordinary circumstances. The first thing I found out was, that my horse had the heaves. I had been so wrapt up in the beauties of the morning that I had not observed what perhaps everybody in that vicinity had observed, namely, that the new horse had been waking up all the sleepers on both sides of the road with an asthmatic whistle of half-a-mile power. My attention was called to the fact by the village teamster, old Dock- weed, who came banging after me in his empty cart, shouting out my name as he came. I must say I have always disliked old Uockweed's familiarity; he presumes too much upon my good- nature, when he calls me Sparrygrass before ladies at the depot, and by my Christian name always on the Sabbath, when he is dressed up. On this occasion, what with the horse's vocal powers and old Dockweed's, the affair was pretty well blown over the village before breakfast. " Sparrygrass," he said, as he came up, " that your hos ? " I replied that the horse was my property. " Got the heaves, ain't he ? got 'em bad." Just then a window was pushed open, and the white head of the old gentle- man who sits in the third pew in front of our pew in church was A FAMILY HORSE: 79 thrust out, "What's the matter with your horse?" said he, <' Got the heaves," replied old Dockweed, "got 'em bad." Then I heard symptoms of opening a blind on the other side of the road, and as I did not wish to run the gauntlet of such inquiries, I rode off on a cross-road ; but not before I heard, above the sound of pulmonary complaint, the voice of old Dockweed explaining to the other cot- tage, " Sparrygrass— got a hos — crot the heaves — got 'em bad." I was so much ashamed, that 1 took a roundabout road to the stable, and instead of coming home like a fresh and gallant cavalier, on a hard gallop, I walked my purchase to the stable, and dismounted with a chastened spirit. "Well, dear," said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, with a face beaming all over with smiles, "how did you like your horse ?" I re- plied that he was not quite so fine a saddle - horse as I had anticipated, but I added, brighten- ing up, for good- humor is sympa- thetic, " he will made a good horse, I think, after all, for you and the children to jog around with in a wagon," " Oh, won't that be pleasant !" said Mrs. Sparrowgrass. Farewell, then, rural rides, and rural roads o' mornings ! Fare- well, song birds and jasper colonnades; farewell, misty rivei and rocky Palisades; farewell mown honey-breath, farewell stir- rup and bridle, dawn and dew; we must jog on at a foot pace. ** GOT THE HEAVES, AINT HE ?'' 8o MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. After all, it is better for your horse to have a pulmonary com- plaint than to have it yourself. I had determined not to build a stable, nor to buy a carriage, until I had thoroughly tested my horse in harness. For this pur- pose, I hired a Rockaway of the stable-keeper. Then I put Mrs. Sparrowgrass and the young ones in the double seats, and took the ribbons for a little drive by the Nepperhan River road. The Nepperhan is a quiet stream that for centuries has wound its way through the ancient dorp of Yonkers. Geologists may trace the movements of time upon the rocky dial of the Palisades, and estimate the age of the more modern Hudson by the foot-prints of saurise in the strata that fringe its banks, but it is impossi- ble to escape the conviction, as you ride beside the Nepperhan, that it is a very old stream — that.it is entirely independent ot earth- quakes— that its birth was of primeval antiquity — and, no doubt, that it meandered through Westchester valleys when the Hudson was only a fresh water lake, land-locked somewhere above Pough- keepsie. It was a lovely afternoon. The sun was sloping west- ward, the meadows - — ■ — ■ ' ' were all a-flame In sunken light, and the mailed grasshopper Shrilled in the maize with ceaseless iteration." We nad passed Chicken Island, and the famous house with the stone gable and the one stone chimney, in which General Wash- ington slept, as he made it a point to sleep in every old stone house in Westchester County, and had gone pretty far on the road, past the cemetery, when ]\lrs. Sparrowgrass said suddenly, Dear, what is the matter with your horse ? " As I had been telling the children all the stories about the river on the way, I had man- aged to get my head pretty well inside the carriage, and, at the time she spoke, was keeping a look-out in front with my back. The remark of Mrs. Sparrowgrass induced me to turn about, and I found the new horse behaving in a most unaccountable manner. He was going down-hill with his nose almost to the ground, run- ning the wagon first on this side and then on the other. I thought of the remark made by the man, and turning again to ]Mrs. Spar- rowgrass, said, "Playful, isn't he?" The next moment I heard something breaking away in front, and then the Rockaway gave a lurch and stood still. Upon examination I found the new A FAMILY HORSE. 8l horse had tumbled down, broken one shaft, gotten the other through the check-rein so as to bring his head up with a round- turn, and besides had managed to put one of th;e traces in a single hitch around his off hind leg. So soon as I had taken all the young ones and Mrs. Sparrowgrass out of the Rockaway, I set to work to liberate the horse, who was choking very fast with the check-rein. It is unpleasant to get your fishing-line in a tangle when you are in a hurry for bites, but I never saw a fislnng- line in such a tangle as that harness. However, I set to work with a penknife, and - ...w -^- stoiu . . ,v . ingtu!. ;nt. hoU^ road, [ta th- Dear, \vit is the m. the ( n. tni.' The : .... I fou; 1 ic : He V ning of the roark made ro\v<: sonit I. ttx • *U ' mocn< the K .. ^ ■ t: >~'^ 3rt '^f r ^- ygjf A FAMILY HORSE, horse had tumbled down, broken one > i, ^v;xaai,^[ _ through the check-rein so as to bring his h J upvK^ » ^^ » turn, and besides had managed to put oi of thr tnrs - single hitch around his off hind leg. So S(n as I ba^ the young ones and Mrs. Sparrowgrass oulof the Rocbv. set to work to liberate the horse, who was loking ttty Us «i^ the check-rein. It is unpleasant to get lur fishing[>ltr. tangle when you are in a hurry for bites, bi T never sawai line in such a tangle as that harness. Hvever, I set to with a penknife, and cut him out in such a way as to make getting home by our convey- ance impossible. When he got up, he was the sleepiest look- ing horse I ever saw. "Mrs. Sparrowgrass," said I, "won't you stay here with the children until I go to the nearest farm-house ?" Mrs. Sparrowgrass re- ,;^*'" plied that she would. ^ Then I took the horse -^ with me to get him '^ out of the way of the children, and went in search of assistance. The first thing the new horse did when he got about a quarto of a mile from the scene of the accident, was to tumble don a bank. Fortu- nately the bank was not over four feet igh, but as I went With him, my trousers were rent in a grieuis place. While I was getting the new horse on his feet againX saw a colored per- son approaching, who came to my assistanc The first thing he did was to pull out a large jack-knife, and le ne.xt thing he did was to open the new horse^s mouth and ru the blade two or three times inside of the new horse's gums. Then the new horse commenced bleeding. " Dah, sah," said te man, shutting up •".. •' .V THE BLINISTAGGKRS. 82 MARK TWAIN' ^ LIBRARY OF HUMOR. his jack-knife, " ef 't hadn't been for dat yer, your hos would ha* bin a o-oner." " What was the matter with him ? " said I. " Oh, he's on'y jis got de blind staggers, das all. Say," said he, before I was half indignant enough at the man who sold me such an animal, " say, ain't your name Sparrowgrass ? " I replied that my name was Sparrowgrass. " Oh," said he, " I knows you; I brung some fowls once down to you place. I heerd about you and you hos. Dats de hos dats got de heaves so bad, heh! heh! You better sell dat horse." I determined to take his advice, and , employed him to lead my purchase to the nearest place where he ' would be cared for. Then I went back to the Rockaway, but met Mrs. Sparrowgrass and the children on the road coming to meet me. She had left a man in charge of the Rockaway. When we got to the Rockaway we found the man missing, also the whip and one cushion. We got another person to take charge of the Rockaway, and had a pleasant walk home by moonlight. Does any person want a horse at a low price ? A good, stylish- looking animal, close-ribbed, good loin, and good stifle, sound legs, with only the heaves and blind-staggers, and a slight defect in one of his eyes ? If at any time he slips his bridle and gets away, you can always approach him by getting on his left side. I will also engage to give a written guarantee that he is sound and kind, signed by the brother of his former owner A GENUINE MEXICAN PLUG. BY MARK TWAIN. I RESOLVED to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such wild, free, magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these pictu- resquely clad Mexicans, Californians and Mexicanized Ameri- cans displayed in Carson streets every day. How they rode ' Leaning just gently forward out of the perpendicular, easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blown square up in front, and long riata swinging above the head, they swept through the town like the wind ! The next minute they were only a sailing puff of dust on the far desert. If they trotted, they sat up A GENUINE MEXICAN PLUG. 83 gallantly and gracefully, and seemed part of the horse ; did not go jiggering up and down after the silly Miss Nancy fashion of the riding-schools. I had quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was full of anxiety to learn more. I was resolved to buy a horse. IN SUSPENSE. While the thought was rankling in my mind, the auctioneer came skurrying through the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners on him as a dromedary, and was neces- 84 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. sarily uncomely ; but he was " going, going, at twenty-two !— horse, saddle and bridle at twenty-two dollars, gentlemen !" and I could hardly resist. A man whom I did not know (he turned out to be the auction- eer's brother) noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a very remarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the saddle alone was worth the money. It was a Spanish saddle, with ponderous tapidaros, and furnished with the ungainly aole-leather covering with the unspellable name. I said I had half a notion to bid. Then this keen-eyed person appeared to me to be "■ taking my measure ; " but I dismissed the suspicion when he spoke, for his manner was full of guileless candor and truthfulness. Said he : " I know that horse — know him well. You are a stranger, I take it, and so you might think he was an American horse, maybe, but I assure you he is not. He is nothing of the kind ; but — excuse my speaking iA a low voice, other people ■ he is. being near- without the shadow of a doubt, a Genuine Mexican Plug !" I did not know what a Genuine Plug was, but there was something about this man's way of saying it that made me swear inwardly that I would own a Gen- uine Mexican Plug or die. " Has he any other — er advantages ? " I inquired, suppressing what eagerness I could. 1 He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one side, and breathed in my ear impressively these words : "He can out-buck anything in America ! " "Going, going, going — at twent-fy-ionx dollars and a half, gen—' " Twenty-seven ! " I shouted, in a frenzy. BADLY MIXED. A GENUINE MEXICAN PLUG. 87 eer's brother's funeral took place while I was in the Territory I would postpone all other recreations and attend it. After a gallop of sixteen miles the Californian youth and the Genuine Mexican Plug came tearing into town again, shedding foam-flakes like the spume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over a wheelbarrow and a Chinaman, cast anchor in front of the " ranch." Such panting and blowing ! Such spreading and contracting of the red equine nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye ! But was the imperial beast subjugated ? Indeed he was not. His lordship the Speaker of the House thought he was, and mounted him to go down to the Capitol ; but the first dash the creature made was over a pile of telegraph poles half as high as a church ; and his time to the Capitol — one mile and three- quarters — remains unbeaten to this day. But then he took an advantage — he left out the mile, and only did three-quarters. That is to say, he made a straight cut across-lots, preferring fences and ditches to a crooked road ; and when the Speaker got to the Capitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt as if he had made the trip on a comet. In the evening the Speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got the Genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned the animal to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, six miles, and he walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed. Everybody I loaned him to always walked back ; they never could get enough exercise any other way. Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was •willin.g to borrow him, my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower's hands, or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing ever happened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took and sur- vived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to try experiments that had always before been considered impos- sible, but he always got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get his rider through intact, but he always got through himself. Of course I had tried to sell him ; but that was a stretch of simplicity which met with little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets on him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and destroy- 88 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. ing children, and never got a bid — at least never any but the eighteen dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make. The people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy, if they had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrew the horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private vendue next, offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron, temperance tracts — any kind of property. But holders were stiff, and we retired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any more. Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing the matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things. Finally I tried to ^/z;^ him away. But it was a failure. Parties said earthquakes were handy enough on the Pacific coast — they did not wish to own one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the use of the " Brigade." His face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again, and he said the thing would be too palpable. Just then the livery-stable man brought in his bill for six weeks' keeping — stall-room- for the horse, fifteen dollars ; hay for the horse, two hundred and fifty ! The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of the article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had let him. I will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay during that year and a part of the next was really two hun- dred and fifty dollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at five hundred a ton, in gold, and during the winter before that, there was such scarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities had brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin ! The consequence might be guessed without my telling it : people turned their stock loose to starve, and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys were almost literally carpeted with their carcases ! Any old settler there will verify these statements. I managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day I gave the Genuine Mexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into my hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the donation. Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Mexican plug will recognize the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly con- sider him exaggerated — but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his portrait as a fancy sketch, perhaps. PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES. 89 PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES. Table Mountain, 1870. by francis bret harte. P^RANCIS BRET HARTE is a native of Albany, N. Y., where he was born in 1837. At the age of seventeen he went to California, where he remained till his thirty-fourth year, and where he was miner, printer, express agent, school teacher, U. S. Marshal's clerk and clerk of the Surveyor-General. He also held a position in the mint. He was a journalist, and at the time he achieved his sudden and extraordinary popularity, he was editor of the Over- land Monthly, which he had managed from the beginning. He had ah-eady achieved distinction on the Pacific coast as a poet and humorist when he re- turned to the East in 1871. After lecturing throughout the country, he made New York his home until appointed Commercial Agent at Crefeldt, in Ger- many, by President Hayes. He was afterwards promoted to the Consulate at Glasgow. He has contributed to the leading periodicals in England and America, and is Avidely known by translations in every language of Europe. Which I wish to remark — And my language is plain — That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar. Which the same I would rise to explain. Ah Sin was his name; And I shall not deny In regard to the same What that name might imply, But his smile it was pensive and childlike, As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye. It was August the third; And quite soft was the skies; Which it might be inferred That Ah Sin was likewise; Yet he played it that day upon William And me, in a way I despise. go MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. "*-. '^1. 'Which we had a small game, And Ah Sin took a hand: It was Euchre. The same He did not understand: But he smiled as he sat by the table, With the smile that was childlike and bland. PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES. Yet the cards they were stocked In a way that I grieve, And my feelings were shocked At the state of Nye's sleeve: Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, And the same with intent to deceive. 91 ■fC-i^ "HE WENT FOR THE HEATHEN CHINEE. But the hands that were played By that heathen Chinee, And the points that he made Were quite frightful to see — Till at last he put down a right bower. Which the same Nye had dealt unto me. g2 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Then I looked up at Nye, And he gazed upon me; And he rose with a sigh, And said " Can this be ? We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor " — And he went for that heathen Chinee. In the scene that ensued I did not take a hand, But the floor it was strewed Like the leaves on the strand With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding, In the game "he did not understand." In his sleeves, which were long. He had twenty-four packs — Which was coming it strong, Yet I state but the facts; And we found on his nails, which were taper, What is frequent in tapers — that's wax. Which is why I remark. And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark, And for tricks that are vain. The heathen Chinee is peculiar — Which the same I am free to maintain. It is said that at dinner parties in Spain, the oldest lady present is seated first. When that plan was tried in New York, many years ago, it resulted in the collations given at evening parties where everybody stands up — New Orleans Picayune. A VISIT TO BRIG HAM YOUNG. 93 A VISIT TO BRIGHAM YOUNG. BY CHARLES F. BROWNE (aRTEMUS WARD). /^HARLES F. BROWNE (Artemus Ward) was born at Waterford, Me., April 23, 1834. He was a printer by trade, and was a compositor in the ofiSce of the Boston Carpet Bag, a comic journal, to which he contributed his first humorous efforts. As a journeyman printer he wandered westward, but seems to have spent the greater part of his time in Ohio, where about the year 1858 he became the "local editor "of the Cleveland Flaindealer. In the " local column " of this newspaper his humorous paragraphs began to aatract notice, and he invented, for the amusement of its readers, the character of Artemus Ward, the Showman, with which he soon became thoroughly identified. He was invited to New York, at the breaking out of the war, to take charge of Vanity Fair, a humorous weekly, which did not survive the serious mood of the time. When it died, he visited Utah and California, and then launched himself upon the public as a comic lecturer, and achieved brilliant success in this country and in England, where perhaps he was even more popular, and where he became a regular and ^favorite contributor to Punch. His collected sketches, lectures, extravaganzas, etc., in three volumes, respectively entitled "Artemus Ward: His Book," "Artemus Ward: His Travels," and "Artemus Ward in Ten- don," are published in New York. Shortly after his arrival in England Browne's health gave way; he fell into consumption, and died at Southampton, May 6, 1867. It is now goin on 2 (too) yeres, as I very well remember, since I crossed the Planes for Kaliforny, the Brite land of Jold. While crossin the Planes all so bold I fell in with sum noble red men of the forest (N. B. — This is rote Sarcasticul. Injins is Pizin, whar ever found), which thay Sed I was their Brother, & wanted for to smoke the Calomel of Peace with me. Thay then stole my jerkt beef, blankits, etsettery, skalpt my orgin grinder & scooted with a Wild Hoop. Durin the Cheaf's techin speech he sed he shood meet me in the Happy Huntin Grounds. If he duz, thare will be a fite. But enuff of this ere. Reven Noose Mutfons, as our skoolmaster, who has got Talent into him, cussycally obsarved. I arrove at Salt Lake in doo time. At Camp Scott there was a lot of U. S. sogers, hosstensibly sent out thare to smash the Mor- mins but really to eat Salt vittles & play poker & other beautiful but sumwhat onsartin games. I got acquainted with sum of the officers. Thay lookt putty scrumpshus in their Bloo coats with 94 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. brass buttings onto um, & ware very talented drinkers, but so fur as fitin is consarned I'd willingly put my wax figgers agin the hull party. My desire was to exhibit my grate show in Salt Lake City, so I called on Brigham Yung, the grate mogull amung the Mormins, and axed his permishun to pitch my tent and onfurl my banner to the jentle breezis. He lookt at me in a austeer manner for a few minits, and sed: " Do you bleeve in Solomon, Saint Paul, the immaculateness of the Mormin Church and the Latter-day Revelashuns ?" Sez I, "I'm on it !" I make it a pint to git along plesunt, tho I didn't know what under the Son the old feller was drivin at. He sed I mite show. "You air a marrid man. Mister Yung, I bleeve?" sez I, pre- parin to rite him sum free parsis. " I hev eighty wives. Mister Ward. I sertinly am marrid." "How do 5-0U like it, as far as you hev got?" sed I. He sed, " Middlin," and axed me wouldn't I like to see his famerly, to which I replide that I wouldn't mind minglin with the fair Seek & Barskin in the winnin smiles of his interestin wives. He accordinly tuk me to his Scareum. The house is powerful big, & in a exceedin large room was his wives (S: children, which larst was squawkin and hollerin enuff to take the roof rite orf the house. The wimin was of all sizes and ages. Sum was pretty & sum was Plane — sum was helthy and sum was on the Wayne — T/hich is verses, tho sich was not my intentions, as I don't 'prove of puttin verses in Proze rittins, tho ef occashun requires I can Jerk a Poim ekal to any of them Atlantic Mtmthly fellers. " My wives. Mister Ward," sed Yung. "Your sarvant, marms," sed I, as I sot down in a cheer which a red-heded female brawt me. "Besides these wives you see here. Mister Ward," sed Yung, " I hav eighty more in varis parts of this consecrated land which air Sealed to me." "Which ?" sez I, getting up & staring at him. " Sealed, Sir ! sealed." " Whare bowts?" sez I. " I sed. Sir, that they was sealed !" He spoke in a tragerdy voice. " Will they probly continner on in that stile to any grate extent, Sir ?" I axed. A VISIT TO B RICH AM YOUNG. 95 "Sir," sed he, turning as red as a biled beet, "don't you know that the rules of our Church is that I, the Profit, may hev as meny wives as I wants ?" '• Jes so," I sed. '< You are old pie, ain't you ?" " Them as is Sealed to me — that is to say, to be mine when I wants urn — air at present my sperretooul wives," sed Mister Yung. " Long may thay wave ! " sez I, seein I shoodgit into a scrape ef I didn't look out. In a privit conversashun with Brigham I learnt the following fax: It takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He don't do it only onct a yere, sez it is wuss nor cleanin house. don't pretend to know his children, is so many of um, tho they all know him. He sez about every child he meats call him Par, & he takes it for grantid it is so. His wives air very expensiv. Thay allers want suthin, & ef he don't buy it for um thay set the house in a up- roar. He sez he don't have a minit's peace. His wives fite among theirselves so much that he has bilt a fiting room for thare speshul benefit, & when too of 'em get into a row he has em turned loose into that place, where the dispoot is settled accordin to the rules of the London prize ring. Sumtimes thay abooz hisself individooally. Thay hev pulled the most of his hair out at the roots, & he wares meny a horrible scar upon his body, inflicted with mop-handles, broom-sticks, and sich. Occash- unly they git mad & scald him with biling hot water. When he got eny waze cranky thay'd shut him up in a dark closit, previshly whippin him arter the stile of muthers when thare orfspring git onruly. Sumtimes when he went in swimmin thay'd go to the banks of the Lake & steal all his close, thereby compellin him to sneek home by a sircootius rowt, drest in the Skanderlus stile of the Greek Slaiv. " I find that the keers of amarrid life way hevy onto me," sed the Profit, **& sumtimes I wish I'd remaned DOMESTIC FELICITY. g 6 MAJ?J^ TWAIN ' S LIB EAR Y OF HUMOR singel." I left the Profit and startid for the tavern whare I put up to. On my way Iwasovertuk by a lurge krowd of Mormins, which they surroundid me & statid they were goin into the Show free. '' Wall," sez I, "ef I find a individooal who is goin round let- tin folks into his show free, I'll let you know." " We've had a Revelashun biddin us go into A. AVard's Show vv'ithout payin nothin 1" thay sho\vted. " Yes," hollered a lot of femaile Mormonesses, ceasin me by the cote tales & swingin me round very rapid, " we're all goin in free ! So sez the Revelashun !" "What's Old Revelashun got to do with my show?" sez I, get- tin putty rily. " Tell Mister Revelashun," sed I, drawin myself up to my full hite and lookin round upon the ornery krowd with a prowd & defiant mean — " tell Mister Revelashun to mind his own bizness, subject only to the Konstitushun of the United States \" " Oh, now, let us in, that's a sweet man," sed several femailes, puttin thare arms round me in luvin style. " Become i of us. Becum a Freest & hav wives Sealed to you." " Not a Seal !" sez I, startin back in horror at the idee. '*0h stay, Sir, stay," sed a tall, gawnt femaile, ore whoos hed 37 summirs hev parsd — "stay, & I'll be your Jentle Gazelle." " Not ef I know it, you won't," sez I. " Awa, you skanderlus femaile, awa ! Go & be a Nunnery !" Thaf s what I sed, jes so. "& I," sed a fat, chunky femaile, who must "hev wade more than too hundred lbs., "I will be your sweet gidin Star !" Sez I, " He bet two dollars and a half you won't !" Whare ear I may Rome He still be troo 2 thee. Oh Betsy Jane ! [N. B. — Betsy Jane is my wife's Sir naime.] " Wiltist thou not tarry here in the promist Land ?" sed several of the meserabil critters. " He see you all essenshally cussed be 4 I wiltist !" roared I, as mad as I cood be at thare infernal noncents. I girdid up my Lions & fled the Seen. I packt up my duds & Left Salt Lake, which is a 2nd Soddum & Germorrer, inhabitid by as theavin & onprincipled a set of retchis as ever drew Breth in any spot on the Globe. THE SIMPLE STORY OF G. WASHINGTON. g^ THE SIMPLE STORY OF G. WASHINGTOX. BY r.CBEP.T J. EUI^DETTIi:' Only yesterday, a lady friend on a shopping c::cursion left her little tid toddler of five bright summers in our experienced charge, while she pursued the duties which called her down-town. Such a bright boy ; so delightful it was to talk to him ! We can never forget the blissful half-hour we spent looking that prodigy up in his centennial history. " Now listen, Clary," we said — his name is Clarence Fitzher- bert Alenyon de Marchemont Caruthcrs — "and learn about George Washington. "Who's he?" inquired Clarence, etc. " Listen," we said; "he v.-as the father of his country." " Whose country ? " "Ours; yours and mine — the confederated union of the American people, cemented with the life blood of the men of '76, poured out upon the altars of our country as the dearest libation to liberty that her votaries can offer ! " "Who did ?" asked Clarence. There is a peculiar tact in talking to children that very few people possess. Now most people would have grow^n impatient and lost their temper when little Clarence asked so many irrele- vant questions, but we did not. We knew, however careless he might appear at first, that we could soon interest him in the ftory, and he would be all eyes and ears. So we smiled sweetly — that same sweet smile which you may have noticed on our photographs, just the faintest ripple of a smile breaking across the face like a ray of sunlight, and checked by lines of tender sadness, just before the two ends of it pass each other at the back of the neck. And so, smiling, we went on. "Well, one day George's father — " "George who?" asked Clarence. " George Washington. He v/as a .ittle boy then, just like you. One day hi? father — " "Whose father?" demanded Clarence with an encouraging expression of interest. 98 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " George Washington's ; this great man we were telling you of. One clay George Washington's faiher gave him a little hatchet for a — " " Gave who a little hatchet?" the dear child interrupted, with a gleam of bewitching intelligence. Most men would have got mad, or betrayed signs of impatience, but we didn't. We know- how to talk to children. So we went on: " George Washington. His — " " Who gave him the little hatchet ? " " His father. And his father — " "Whose father?" " George Washington's." "Oh!" " Yes, George Washington. And his father told him—" "Told who?" " Told George." " Oh, yes, George." And we went on just as patient and as pleasant as you could imagine. We took up the story right where the boy interrupted, for we could see that he was ju-st crazy to hear the end of it. We said : "And he told him that—" " George told him?" queried Clarence. " No, his father told George — " " Oh ! " " Yes ; told him that he must be careful with the hatchet — " "Who must be careful?" '' George must." "Oh!" "Yes ; must be car(2ful with the hatchet — " "What hatchet?" "Why, George's." "Oh!" " Yes ; with the hatchet, and not cut himself with it, or drop it in the cistern, or leave it out on the grass all night. So George went rou ^.d cutting everything he could reach with his hatchet. And at last he came to a splendid apple-tree, his father's favor- ite, and cut it down, and — " CLARENCE. THE SIMPLE STORY OF G. WASHINGTON. 99 << Who cut it down ? " " George did," "Oh 1" " But his father came home and saw it the first thing, and — " " Saw the hatchet ? " " No ! saw the apple tree. And he said: ' Who has cut down my favorite apple-tree ? '" " Whose apple-tree ? " "George's father's. And everybody said they didn't know anything about it, and — " " Anything about what ? " " The apple-tree." "Oh!" " And George came up and heard them talking about it — " " Heard who talking about it ? " " Heard his father and the men.' " What was they talking about? " ' About this apple-tree." "What apple-tree?" " The favorite apple-tree that George cut down." " George who ? " " George Washington." "Oh!" " So George came up, and he said, ' Father, I cannot tell a lie. It was—' " "His father couldn't?" "Why, no, George couldn't." "Oh! George? Oh, yes !" " ' It was I cut down your apple-tree ; I did — ' " His father did ? " " No, no, no ; said he cut down his apple-tree." " George's apple-tree ? " "No, no; his father's." "Oh!" " He said—" " His father said?" "No, no, no; George said, 'Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet.' And his father said: 'Noble boy, I would rather lose a thousand trees than have you to tell a lie.' "George did? " lOO MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " No ; his father said that." "Said he'd rather have a thousand trees?" "No, no, no; said he'd rather lose a thousand apple-irees than—" •* Said he'd rather George would ? " " No ; said he'd rather he would than have him lie." "Oh ! George would rather have his father lie ? " We are patient, and we love children, but if Mrs. Caruthers, of Arch Street, hadn't come and got her prodigy at that critical juncture, we don't believe all Burlington could have pulled us out of the snarl. And as Clarence Fitzherbert Alen^on de Marchemont Caruthers pattered down the stairs, we heard him telling his ma about a boy who had a father named George, and he told him to cut an apple-tree, and he said he'd rather tell a thousand lies than cut down one apple-tree. We do love chil- dren, but we don't believe that cither nature or education haj fitted us to be a governess. THE COURTIN'. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 5 AMES RUSSELL LUvVELL, whose " Biglovv Papers " placed America inapproachably first in humorous literature, was born at Cambridge, Mass., in 1819, and was graduated at Harvard in 1838. He was admitted to the bar two years later, but never practiced his profession, having already given proofs of his poetic genius and transcendent wit. He early dedicated himself to the anti-slavery cause; and these literary efforts that made his fame were lor a Jong time more or less in its interest. After some years' travel and study in southern Europe, he took the chair vacated by Longfellow's lesignation, of Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres in Harvard, which he held till appointed Minister to Spain in 1877. He was transferred to the English Court in 188a He was the first editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and v/as afterwards editor of The Nrrth American Review. God makes sech nights, all white an' still , Fur 'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten. THE COURTIN' iqi Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'Ith no one nio-h to hender. & A fireplace filled the room's one side With half a cord o' wood in — There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'. The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pcotiest, bless her, An' leetle flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. The very room, coz she was in, . Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'. *T was km' o' kingdom-come to look On sech a blessed cretur, A dog-rose blushin' to a brook Ain't modestcr nor sweeter. He was six foot o' man, A i, Clean grit an' human natur'; None couldn't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighten '&' Ke'd sparked it with full twenty gals. He'd squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'cm, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells — All is, he couldn't love 'em. 102 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOii. But lono; o' her his veins 'ould run Al! crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed felt full o' sun Ez a south slope in Ap'il. She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir; Mv ! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, She knozved the Lord was nigher. THE COURTIN An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, When her new meetin'-bunnet Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair O' blue eyes sot upon it. Thet night, I tell ye, she looked cornel She seemed to've gut a new soul. For she felt sartin-sure he'd come, Down to her very shoe-sole. THE COURTIN'. She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, A-raspin' on the scraper — All ways to once her feelins flew Like sparks in burnt-u]5 paper. He kin' o' Titered on the mat, Some doubtfie o' the sekle, Hi:: heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity Zekle. An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' away like murder. •* You want to see my Pa, I s' pose ?" " Wal .... no .... I come dasignin' ** To see my Ma ? She's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'," To say why gals acts so or so, Or don't, 'ould be presumin'; Mcbby to vaea.x\yes an' say no, Comes nateral to women. He stood a spell on one foot fust, Then stood a spell on t'other, An' on which one he felt the wust He couldn't ha' told ye nuther. Says he, "I'd better call agin"; Says she, "Think likely, Mister"; Thet last word pricked him like a pin, An' .... Wal, he up an' kist her. WhiCn Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes, All kin' o' smily roun' the lips An' teary roun' the lashes. 103 ro^ MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. For she was jes' the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind Snowhid in Jenooary. The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued Too tight for all expressing Tell mother see how metters stood, And gin 'em both her blessin'. Then her red come back like the tide Down to the Bay o' Fundy, An' all I know is they was cried In meetin' come nex' Sunday 'TIS ONLY ]\IY HUSBAND. BY JOSEPH C. NEAL. ^tOSEPH C. NEAL, author of the once famous " Charcoal Sketches," was ^ born in Greenland, N. H., in 1807, and died in 1847 at Philadelphia, where he passed nearly two-thirds of his life in connection with different jour- nals, lie was the author of two other volumes: "The City Worthies," and "Peter Ploddy and other Oddities." " Goodness, Mrs. Pumpilion, it's a gentleman's voice, and me such a figure ! " exclaimed Miss Amanda Corntop, who had just arrived in town to visit her friend, Mrs. Pumpilion, whom she had not seen since her marriasre. " Don't disturb yourself, dear," said Mrs. Pumpilion, quietly, " it's nobodv— 'tis only ray husband. He'll not come in; but if he does, 'tis only my husband." So Miss Amanda Corntop was comforted, and her agitated arrangements before the glass being more coolly completed, she. resumed her seat and the interrupted conversation. Although, as a spinster, she had a laudable and natural unwillingness to be seen by any of the masculine gender in that condition so graphr- 'TIS ONLY MY nUSBAXD. lO: cally described as " such a' figure," yet there are ue,j,Tees in this unwillingness. It is by no me-ins so painful to be caught a figure by a married mrai as it is to be surprised by a youth! ui bachelor; and, if the former be of that peculiar class known as '' only my husband," his unexpected arrival is of very little consequence. He can never more, " like an eagle in a dove cote, flutter the Volsces.'' It is, therefore, evident that there exists a material difference between "my husband" and "only my husband;" a difference not easily expressed, though perfectly understood; and it was that understanding which restored Miss Am.anda Corntop to her pris- tine tranquillity. "Oh !"' said Miss Corntop, when she heard that the voice in question was that of Mr. Pumpilion. "Ah!" added Miss Corntop, intelligent- ly and composedly, when she understood that Pumpilion was " only my husband." She had not paid m u c h attention to philology but she was perfectly aware of the value of that diminu- tive prefix " only." '•'■ I told you he would not come in, for he knew there w-as some one here," continued Mrs. Pumpilion, as the spiritless footsteps of '• only my husband " passed the door, and slowly plodded up- stairs. Pie neither came in, nor did he hum, whistle, or bound three steps at a time; " only my husband " never does. He is simply a transportation line; he conveys himself from pi^ce to place, according to order, and indulges not in episodes and embellishments. Poor Pedrlgo Pumpilion ! Have all thy glories shrunk to this little measure ? Only ray husband ! Does that appellation cir- cumscribe him who once found three chairs barely sufficient to ONLY 1\IY HUSBAND. I06 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. accommodate his frame, and who, in promenading, never skulV jd to the curb or hugged the walJ, but, Uke a man who justly appre- ciated himself, took the very middle of the trottoir, and kept it ? The amiable but now defunct Mrs. Anguish was never sure that she was perfectly well, ivatil she had shaken her pretty head to ascertain if some disorder were not lying in ambush, and to discover whether a headache were not latent there, which, if not nipped in the bud, might be suddenly and inconveniently brought into action. It is not too much to infer that the same reasoning which applies to headaches and to the physical constitution, may be of equal force in reference to the moral organization. Head-, aches being latent, it is natural to suppose that the disposition to be " only my husband" may likewise be latent, even in him who is now as fierce and uncontrollable as a volcano; while the desire to be "head of the bureau'' may slumber in the mildest of the fair. It is by circumstance alone that talent is developed; the razor itself requires extraneous aid to bring it to an edge; and the tact to give direction, as well as the facility to obey, \vait to be elicited by events. Both greyinareism and Jerry-Sneaker}'- are sometimes latent, and like the. derangements of Mrs. Anguish's caput, only want shaking to manifest themselves. If some are born to command, others must certainly have a genius for sub- mission— we term it a genius, submission being in many cases rather a difficult thing. That this division of qualities is full of wisdom, none can deny. It requires both flint and steel to produce a spark; both powder and ball to do execution; and, though the Chinese contrive to gobble an infinity of rice with chopsticks, yet the twofold opera- tion of knife and fork conduces much more to the comfort of a dinner. Authority and obedience are the knife and fork of this extensive banquet, the world; they are the true divide ct impe7-a; that which is sliced off by the one is harpooned by the other. In this distribution, however, nature, when the "latents" are made apparent, very frequently seems to act with caprice. It is by no means rare to find in the form of a man a timid, retiring, feminine disix)sition, which, in the rough encounters of existence, gives way at once, as if like woman, •' born to be controlled." The proportions of a Hercules, valenced with the whiskers of a tiger, often cover a heart with no more of energy and boldness in its pulsations than the little palpitating affair which throbs in ' TIS ONL Y MY HUSBAND. 107 the bosom ot a maiden of bashful fifteen; while many a lady fair, before marriage — the latent condition — all softness and graceful humility, bears within her breast the fiery resolution and the indomitable will of an Alexander, a Hannibal, or a Doctor Fran- cia. The temperament which, had she been a man, would, in an extended field, have made her a conqueror of nations, or, in a more contracted one, a distinguished thief- catching police officer, by being lodged in a female frame renders her a Xantippe— -a Napoleon of the fireside, and pens her hapless mate, like a con- quered king, a spiritless captive in his own chimney-corner. pjut it is plain to be seen that this apparent confusion lies only in the distribution. There are souls enough of all kinds in the world, but they do not always seem properly fitted with bodies; and thus a corporal construction may run the course of life actu- ated by a spirit in every respect opposed to its capabilities; as at the breaking up of a crowded soiree, a little head waggles home with an immense castor, while a pumpkin pate sallies forth sur- mounted by a thimble; which, we take it, is the only philoso- phical theory which at all accounts for the frequent acting out of character with which society is replete. Hence arises the situation of affairs with the Pumpilions. Pedrigo Pumpilion has the soul which legitimately appertains to his beloved Seraphina Serena, while Seraphina Serena Pumpilion has that which should animate her Pedrigo. But, not being pro- found in their researches, they are probably not aware of the fact, and perhaps would not know their own souls if they were to meet them in the street; although, in all likelihood, it was a mysterious sympathy — a yearning of each physical individuality to be near so important a part of itself, which brought this worthy pair together. Be that, however, as it may, it is an incontrovertible fact that, Ijcfore they did come together, Pedrigo Pumpilion thought him- self quite a model of humanity; and piqued himself upon pos- sessing much more of thefortifer in re than of the suavitcr in modo—^ mistake, the latter quality being latent, but abundant. He dreamed that he was brimming with valor, and fit, not only to lead squadrons to the field, but likewise to remain with them when they were there. At the sound of drums and trumpets, he perked up his chin, stuck out his breast, straightened his vertebral column, and believed that he, Pedrigo, was precisely the individ- I08 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. ual to storm a fortress at the head of a forlorn hope — a greater mistake. But the greatest error of the whole troop of blunders was his making a Pumpilion of Miss Seraphina Serena Dolce, with the decided impression that he was, while sharing his king- dom, to remain supreme in authority. Knowing nothing of the theory already broached, he took her for a feminine feminality, and yielded himself a victim to sympathy and the general welfare. Now, in this, strictly considered, Pedrigo had none but him- self to blame; he had seen manifestations of her spirit; the latent energy had peeped out more than once; he had entered unex- ' pectedly, before being installed as " only my husband," and found Miss Seraphina dancing the grand rigadoon on a luckless bonnet which did not suit her fancy — a species of exercise whereat he marveled, and he had likewise witnessed her performance of the remarkable feat of whirling a cat, which had scratched her hand, across the room by the tail, whereby the mirror was infini- tesimally divided into homoeopathic doses, and whereby pussy, the patient, was most allopathically phlebotomised and scarified. He likewise knew that her musical education terminated in an operatic crash, the lady having in a fit of impatience demolished the guitar over the head of her teacher; but, in this instance, the mitigating plea must be allowed that it was done because the instrument " wouldn't play good," a perversity to which instru- ments, like lessons "which won't learn,"' are lamentably liable. These little escapades, however, did not deter Pumpilion. Con- fiding in his own talent for governing, he liked his Seraphina none the less for her accidental displays of energj'-, and smiled to think how, under his administration, his reproving frown would cast oil upon the waves, and how, as he repressed her irritability, he would develop her affections, results which would both save the crockery and increase his comforts. Of the Pumpilion tactique in courtship some idea may be formed from the following conversation. Pedrigo had an intimate asso- ciate, some years his senior — Mr. Michael Mitts, a spare and emaciated bachelor, whose haw.k nose, crookedly set on, well represented the eccentricity of his conclusions, v/hile the wnis- tling pucker in which he generally wore his mouth betokened acidity of mind rendered sourer by indecision. Mitts was addicted to observation, and, engaged in the drawing of inferences and in generalizing from individual instances, he had, like many others, ' TIS Om.y MY HUSBAND. 109 while trimming the safety lamp of experience, suffered the tune of aciion to pass by unimproved. His cautiousness was so great as to trammel up his " motive power," and, though long intendi'-p- to marry, the best part of his life had evaporated in the unpro- ductive employment of "looking about." His experience, there- fore, had stored him with that species of wisdom which one meets with in theoretical wooers, and he had many learned saws at the service of those who were bolder than himself, and were deter- mined to enter the pale through which he peeped. As every one in love must have a confidant, Fedrio-o had selected Mitts for that office, knowing his peculiar talent for giv- ing advice, and laymg down rules for others to act upon. " Pedrigo," said Mitts, as he flexed his nose still further from the right line of conformity to the usages of the world, and slacked the drawmg-strings of his mouth to get it out of pucker — " Pedrigo, if you are resolved upon marrying this identical indi- vidual— I don't see the use, for my part, of being in a hurry — better look about a while; plenty more of 'em — but if you are resolve d, the first thing to be done is to make sure of her. That's undeniable. The only difference of opinion, if you won't wait and study character — character's a noble study — is as to the modus operandi. Now, the lady's not sure because she's com- mitted; just the contrary — that's the very reason she's not sure. My experience shov/s me that when it's not so easy to retract, the attention, especially that of young women, is drawn to retraction. Somebody tells of a bird in a cage that grumbled about being cooped up. It's clear to me that the bird did not complain so much because it was in the cage, as it did because it couldn't get out — that's bird nature, and it's human nature too." "Ah, indeed!" responded Pumpilion, with a smile of con- fidence in his own attractions, mingled, however, with a look which spoke that the philosophy of Mitts, having for its object to render "assurance double sure," did not pass altogethei unheeded. "It's a fact," added Mitts; " don't be too secure. Be as assid- uous and as mellifluous as you please before your divinity owns the soft impeachment; but afterwards comes the second stage, and policy commands that it should be one rather of anxiety to lier. Vou must every now and then play Captain Grand, or else she may perform the part herself. Take offense frequently; vary I TO MARK TJVAIX'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. your Romeo scenes with an occasional touch of the snow-storm, and afterwards excuse yourself on the score of jealous aftection; that excuse always answers. Nothing sharpens love like a smart tiff by way of embellishment. The sun itself would not look so bright if it were not for the intervention of night; and these little agitations keep her mind tremulous, but intent upon yourself. Don't mothers always love the naughtiest boys best ? Haven't the worst men ahvays the best wives ? That exemplifies the principle; there's nothing like a little judicious bother. Miss Seraphina Serena will never change her mind if bothered scien- tifically." "Perhaps so; but may it not be rather dangerous?" "Dangerous ! not at all; it's regular practice, I tell you. A few cases may terminate unluckily; but that must be charged to a bungle in the doctor. Why, properly managed, a courtship may be continued, like a nervous disease, or a suit at law, for twenty years, and be as good at the close as it was at the begin- ning. In nine cases out of ten, you must either perplex or be perplexed; so you had better take the sure course, and play the game yourself. Them's my sentiments, Mr. Speaker;" and Michael Mitts caused his lithe proboscis to oscillate like a rud- der, as he concluded his oracular speech, and puckered his mouth to the whistling place, to show that he had " shut up " for the present. He then walked slowly away, leaving Pumpilion with a " new wrinkle." Seraphina Serena, being both fiery and coquettish withal, Pum- pilion, under the direction of his preceptor, tried the " Mitts sys- tem of wooing," and although it gave rise to frequent explosions, 5''et the quarrels, whether owing to the correctness of the system or not, were productive of no lasting evil. Michael Mitts twirled his nose and twisted his mouth in triumph at the wedding, and set it down as an axiom that there is nothing like a little insecurity for rendering parties firm incompleting a bargain; that, had it not been for practicing the system, Pumpilion might have become alarmed at the indications of the "latent system; " and that had it not been for the practice of the system, Seraphina's fancy mig^^.t have strayed. "I'm nn experimenter in mental operations, and there's no lack pf subjects," said Mitts to himself; "one fact being esta'o- lished, the Pumpilions now present a new aspect." ' TIS ONL V My HUSBAND. I i j There is, however, all the difference in the world between carrying on warfare where you may advance and retire at pleas- ure, and in prosecuting it in situations which admit of no retreat. Partisan hostilities are one thing, and regular warfare is another. Pumpilion was very well as a guerilla, but his genius in that respect was unavailing when the nature of the campaign did not admit of his making an occasional demonstration, and of evading the immediate consequences by a retreat. In a very few weeks he was reduced to the ranks as " only my husband," and, although no direct order of the day was read to that effect, he was " re- spected accordingly." Before that retrograde promotion took place, Pedrigo Pumpilion cultivated his hair, and encouraged its sneaking inclmation to curl until it woollied up quite fiercely; but afterwards his locks became broken -heartedly pendant, and straight with the weight of care, while his whiskers hung back as if asking counsel and comfort from his ears. He twiddled his thumbs v/ith a slow, rotary motion as he sat, and he carried his hands clasped behind him as he walked, thus intimating that he couldn't help it, and that he didn't mean to try. For the same reason, he never buttoned his coat, and wore no straps to the feet of his trousers; both of which seemed too energetically reso- lute for "only my husband." Even his hat, as it sat on the back part of his head, looked as if Mrs. Pumpilion had put it on for him (no one but the wearer can put on a hat so that it will sit naturally), and as if he had not nerve enough even to shake it down to its characteristic place and physiognomical expression. His personnel \0VidXy proclaimed that the Mitts method in matri- mony had been a failure, and that the Queen had given the King a check-mate. Mrs. Pumpilion had been triumphant in acting upon the advice of her friend, the widow, who, having the advantage of Mitts in combining experience with theory, under- stood the art of breaking husbands a merveille. "My dear madam," said Mrs. Margery Daw, "you have plenty of spirit; but spirit is nothing without steadiness and per- severance. In the establishment of authority and in the asser- tion of one's rights, any intermission before success is complete requires us to begin again. If your talent leads you to the weep- ing method of softening your husband's heart, you will find that if you give him a shower now and a shower then, he will harden in the intervals between the rain; while a good sullen cry of 112 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. twenty-four hours' length may prevent any necessity for anotner. If, on the contrary, you have genius for the tempestuous, contin- ued thunder and Hghtning for the same length of time is irresist- ible. Gentlemen are great sv/aggerers, if not impressively dealt with and early taught to know their places. They are much like Frisk," continued the widow, addressing her lap-dog. "If they bark, and you draw l^ack frightened, they are sure to bite: stamp your foot, and they soon learn to run into a corner. Don't they. Frisky dear? " " Ya-p ! " responded the dog, and Mrs. PumpiJion, tired of control, took the concurrent advice. "To-morrow," said Pumpilicn, care- lessly and with an of-course-ish air, as he returned to tea from a stroll v/ith his friend, Michael Mitts, who had just been urging on him the propriety of continuing the Mitts method after marriap-e — " to- morrow, my love, I leave town for a v/eek to try a little trout fishing in the moun- tains." "Mr. Pumpilion!" ejaculated the lady, in an awful tone, as she suddenly faced him. " Fishing ? " " Y-e-e-yes," replied Pumpilion, some- vv'hat discomposed. " Then I shall go with you, Mr. Pura- pliion," said the lady, as she emphatically split a muffin. "Quite ^//possible," returned Pumpilion, with decisive stress upon the first syllable; " it's a buck party, if I may use the expres- sion— a buck party entirely — there's Mike ]\Iitts, funny Joe Mungoozle — son of old Mungoozle— Tommy Titcomb, and myself. We intend having a rough and tumble among the hills to beneficialize our wholesomes, as funny Joe Mungoozle has it." " Funny Joe Mungoozle is not a fit companion for any mar- ried man, Mr. Pumpilion; and it's easy to see, by your sliding back among the dissolute friends and dissolute practices of your bachelorship, Mr. Pumpilion, by your wish to associate with sneermg and depraved Mungoozles, Mitts 2nd Titcombs, Mr. TOMMY TITCOMB. ' TIS ONL Y MY HUSBAND. 113 Pumpilion, that the society of your poor wife is losing its attractions," and Mrs, Pumpilion sobbed convulsively at the thought. "I have given my word to go a-fishing," replied Pedrigo, rather ruefully, "and a-fishing I must go. What would Mun- goozle say ? — why, he would have a song about it, and sing it at the 'free and easies.' " "What matter? let him say — let him suig. But it's not my observations — it's those of funny Joe Mungoozle that you care for — the affections of the ' free and easy ' carousers that you are afraid of losing." " Mungoozle is a very particular friend of mine, Seraphina," replied Pedrisro, rather nettled. "We're going a-fishing — that's flat ! " "Without me?" " Without you — it being a l)uck party, without exception." "Mrs. Pumpilion gave a shriek, and falling back, threw out her arms fitfully — the tea-pot went by the^ board as she made the tragic move- m.ent. '' Wretched, unhappy w^oman ! " gasped Mrs. Pumpilion, speaking of herself. Pedrigo did not respond to the declaration, but alternately eyed the fragments of the tea-pot and the untouched mufifin which remained on his plate. The coup had not been without its effect; but still he faintly whispered, " Funny Joe Mungoozle, and going a-fishing." " It's clear you wish to kill me — to break my heart," muttered the lady, in a spasmodic manner. " 'Pon my soul, I don't— Fm only going a-fishing." "I shall go distracted!" screamed Mrs. Pumpilion, suiting the action to the word, and springing to her feet in such a way as to upset the table, and roll its contents into Pedrigo's lap, who scrambled from the debris, as his wife, with the air of the FUNNY JOE MUNGOOZLE. 114 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Pythoness, swept rapidly round the room, whirling the ornaments to the floor, and indulging in the grand rigadoon upon their remains. " You no longer love me, Pedrigo; and without your love what is life? What is this, or this, or this ?" continued she, a crash following eveiy word, *' without mutual affection ? Going a fishing ! "' " I don't know that I am," whined Pumpilion; "perhaps it will rain to-morrow." Now it so happened that there were no clouds visible on the occasion, except in the domestic atmosphere; but the rain was adroitly thrown in as a white flag, indicative of a wish to open a negotiation and come to terms. Mrs. Pumpilion, however, under- stood the art of war better than to treat with rebels with arms in their hands. Her military genius, no longer " latent," whispered her to persevere until she obtained a surrender at discretion. " Ah, Pedrigo, you only say that to deceive your heart-broken wife. You intend to slip avvay — you and your Mungoozles — to pass your hours in roaring iniquity, instead of enjoying the calm sunshine of domestic peace, and the gentle delights of fireside felicity. They are too tame, too flat, too insipid, for a depraved taste. That I should ever live to see the day ! " and she relapsed into the intense style, by way of a specimen of calm delight. Mr. and Mrs. Pumpilion retired for the night at an early hour; but until the dawn of day, the words of reproach, now passionate, now pathetic, ceased not; and in the very gray of the morning, Mrs. P. marched down stairs en dishabille, still repeating ejacu- lations about the Mungoozle fishing-party. What happened below is not precisely ascertained; but there was a terrible tur- moil in the kitchen, it being perfectly clear a whole "kettle of fish" was in preparation, that Pedrigo might not have the trouble of going to the mountains on a piscatorial expedition. He remained seated on the side of his bed, like Marius upon the rums of Carthage, meditating upon the situation of affairs, and balancing between a surrender to petticoat government and his dread of Mungoozle's song at the "free and easies." At length he slipped down. Mrs. Pumpilion sat glooming at the parlor window. Pedrigo tried to read the Saturday News upside down. ' TIS ONL Y MY HUSBAND. 115 " Good morning, Mr. Pumpilion ! Going a-fishing, Mr. Pum- pilion ? Mike Mitts, funny Joe Mungoozle and Tommy Titcomb must be waiting for you, you know," continued she, with a mock- ing smile; "you're to go this morning to the mountains on a rough and tumble for the benefit of your wholesomes. The elegance of the phraseology is quite in character with the whole affair." Pedrigo was tired out ; Mrs. Margery Daw's perseverance prescription had been too much for the Mitt method; the widow had overmatched the bachelor. "No, Seraphina, my dearest, I'm not going a-fishing, if you don"t desire it, and I see you don't." Not a word about it's being likely to rain — the surrender was unconditional. " But," added Pedrigo, " I should like to have a little break- fast." Mrs. Pumpilion was determined to clinch the nail. " There's to be no breakfast here — I've been talking to Sally and Tommy in the kitchen, and I verily believe the whole world's in a plot against me. They're gone, Mr. Pumpilion — gone a- fishing, perhaps." The battle was over — the victory was won — the nail was clinched. Tealess, sleepless, breakfastless, what could Pedrigo do but sue for mercy, and abandon a contest waged against such hopeless odds ? The supplies being cut off, the siege-worn garri- son must surrender. After hours of solicitation, the kiss of amity was reluctantly accorded ; on condition, however, that " funny Joe Mongoozle " and the rest of the fishing party should be given up, and that he, Pedrigo, for the future should refrain from associating with bachelors and widowers, both of whom she tabooed, and consort with none but staid married men. From this moment the individuality of that once free agent, Pedrigo Pumpilion, was sunk into "only my husband" — the humblest of all humble animals. He fetches and carries, goes errands, and lugs band-boxes and bundles; he walks the little Pumpilions up and down the room when they squall o' nights, and he never comes in when any of his wife's distinguished friends call to visit her. In truth, Pedrigo is not always in a presentable condition; for as Mrs. Pumpilion is ^^/a^/^? treasurer, he is kept upon rather short allowance, her wants being para- I 1 6 MARK TV/AIiY'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. mount, and proportioned to the dignity of head of the family. But although he is now dutiful enough, he at first ventured once or twice to be refractory. These symptoms of insubordination, however, were soon quelled — for jNIrs. Pumpilion, with a signifi- cant glance, inquired: '■'■ Are you going a-fishing again, my dear?" A DAY'S WORK BY MARK TWAIN, Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the ]ips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful and inviting, Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him, and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high ! Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank ; repeated the operation ; did it again ; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak v.ith the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing "Buffalo Gals." Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. White, mulatto and negro boys and girls always were there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarreling, fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an hour — and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said: A DAY'S WORK. 117 "Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some." Jim shook his head and said : " Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an* git dis water an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend to my own business — she 'lowed she' d 'tend to de whitewashin'." " Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she talks. Gimme the bucket— I won't be gone only a minute. She won't ever know." "Oh, I dasn't. Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off' n me. 'Deed she would." ^I^ TENDING TO BUSINESS. ^^ She ! She never licks anybody — whacks 'em over the head with her thimble — and who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but talk don't hurt — anyways, it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you a marvel. I'll give you a white alley ! " Jim began to waver. " White alley, Jim ! And its a bully taw." " My ! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, / tell you ! But, Mars Tom, I's powerful 'fraid ole missis — " "And besides, if you will, I'll show you my sore toe." Jim was only human — this attraction was too much for him. ii8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. He put clown his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound, In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye. But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had planned for this , day, and his sorrows /, multiplied. Soon the 'ff/ free boys would come ^ tripping along on all sorts of delicious ex- peditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to work — t he very thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and examined it — bits of toys, marbles and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straightened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying At this dark and hopeless moment an inspira- him ! Nothing less than a great, magnificent PUTTING IT IN A NEW LIGHT. to buy the boys, tion burst upon inspiration. He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently — the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump — proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at A DAY'S WORK. 119 intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance for he was personating the Big Alissotiri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat, and captain, and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and execut- ing them : " Stop her, sir ! Ting-a-ling-ling ! " The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk. " Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling ! " His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides. "Set her back on the stabbord ! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow ! Chow ! " His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles — for it was representing a forty-foot wheel. " Let her go back on the labbord ! Ting-a-ling-ling ! Chow- ch-chow-chow ! " The left hand began to describe circles. " Stop the stabbord ! Ting-a-ling-ling ! Stop the labbord ! Come ahead on the stabbord ! Stop her ! Let your outside turn over slow ! Ting-a-ling-ling ! Chow-ow-ow ! Get out that head- line ! Lively now ! Come — out with your spring-line — what're you about there ! Take a turn round that stump with the bight of it ! Stand by that stage, now — let her go ! Done with the engines, sir ! ' Ting-a-ling-ling ! S/ii! slit! slit !" (trying the gauge-cocks). Tom went on whitewashing — paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and then said : " Hi-yi ! Yoiire up a stump, ain't you ! " No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist ; then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said : " Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey ? " Tom wheeled suddenly and said : " Why, it's you, Ben ! I warn't noticing." «' Say — /'m going in a-swimming, /am. Don't you wish you could ? But of course you'd druther work — wouldn't you ? Course you would ' Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said : I 2 O MARK TWAIN ' S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR, " What do you call work ? " " Why, ain't ^/laf work ? " Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly : "Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer." *' Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you /ike it ? " The brush continued to move, *' Like it ? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day ? " That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth — stepped back to note the effect — added a touch here and there — criticised the effect again — Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said : " Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little." Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind : " No — no — I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence — right here on the street, you know — but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind, and she wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about this fence ; it's got to be done very careful ; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thou- sand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done. " No — is that so ? Oh, come, now — lemme just try. Only just a little — I'd let jou, if you was me, Tom." "Ben, I'd like to, honest injun ; but Aunt Polly — well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him. Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed ? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it " " Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say — I'll give you the core of my apple." "' Well, here — . No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeared — " *' I'll give you a// oi it !" Tom gave up the brush, with reluctance in his face but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Alissouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material ; boys happened along every little while ; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom TRYING TO UNDERSTAND A WOMAN. 121 had traded the next chance to Billy Fioher for a kite, in good repair ; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with— and so on, and so on, hour after houi". And Vv'hen the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had, besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jew's-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock any- thing, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decantei", a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar — but no dog — the handle of a knife, fourpiecescf orange-peel, and adilapidated old window- sash. TRYING TO UNDERSTAND A WOMAN. BY W. D. HOWELLS. TjjM. DEAN HOWELLS was born at Martin's Ferry, Belmont County, O., Marcli I, 1837. He is a printer by trade and inheritance, and he early entered newspaper life. He is the author of many novels, sketches, criticisriis, dramatic studies, poems and travels. The last hues of sunset lingered in the mists that sprung from the base of the Falls with a mournful, tremulous grace, and a movement weird as the play of the Northern Lights. They were touched with the most delicate purples and crimsons, that dark- ened to deep red, and then faded from them at a second look, and they flew upward, swiftly upward, like troops of pale, trans- parent ghosts; while a perfectly clear radiance, better than any other for local color, dwelt upon the scene. Far under the bridge the river smoothly swam, the undercurrents forever unfolding themselves upon the surface with a vast rose-like evolution, edged all round with faint lines of white, where the air that filled the water freed itself in foam. What had been clear green on the face of the cataract was here more like rich verd-antique, and had a look of firmness almost like that of the stone itself. So it showed beneath the bridge and down the river, till the curving I 2 2 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAR Y OF HUMOR. shores hid it. These, springing abruptly from the water's brink, and shagged with pine and cedar, displayed the tender verdure of grass and bushes intermingled with the dark evergreens that climb from ledge to ledge, till they point their speary tops above the crest of bluffs. In front, where tumbled rocks and expanses of naked clay varied the gloomier and gayer green, sprung those spectral mists; and through them loomed out, in its manifold majesty, Niagara, with the seemingly immovable white gothic screen of the American Fall, and the green massive curve of the Horse-Shoe, solid and simple and calm as an Egyptian wall; while behind this, with their white and black expanses broken by dark-foliaged little isles, the steep Canadian rapids billowed dov/n between their heavily wooded shores. The wedding-journeyers hung, they knew not how long, in rapt- ure on the sight; and then, looking back from the shore to the spot where they had stood, they felt relieved that unreality should possess itself of all, and that the bridge should swing there in mid-air like a filmy web, scarce more passable than the rainbow that flings its arch above the mists. On the portico of the hotel they found half a score of gentle- men smoking, and creating together that collective silence which passes for sociality on our continent. Some carriages stood before the door, and within, around the base of a pillar, sat a circle of idle call-boys. There were a few trunks heaped together in one place, with a porter standing guard over them; a solitary guest was buying a cigar at the newspaper stand in one corner; another friendless creature was writing a letter in the reading- room; the clerk, in a seersucker coat and a lavish shirt-bosom, tried to give the whole an effect of watering-place gayety and bustle, as he provided a newly arrived guest with a room. Our pair took in these traits of solitude and repose with indif- ference. If the hotel had been thronged with brilliant company, they would have been no more and no less pleased; and when, after supper, they came into the grand parlor, and found noth- ing there but a marble-topped centre-table, with a silver-plated ice-pitcher and a small company of goblets, they sat down per- fectly content in a secluded window-seat. They were not seen by the three people who entered soon after, and halted in the centre of the room. " Why, Kitty !" said one of the two ladies who must be m any TRYING TO UNDERSTAND A WOMAN. 123 traveling-party of three, "this is more inappropriate to your gorgeous array than the supper-room, even." She who was called Kitty was armed, as for social conquest, in some kind of airy evening dress, and was looking round with bewilderment upon that forlorn waste of carpeting and uphol- stery. She owned, with a smile, that she had not seen so much of the world yet as she had been promised; but she liked Niagara very much, and perhaps they should find the world at breakfast. " No," said the other lady, who was as unquiet as Kitty was calm, and who seemed resolved to make the most of the worst, " it isn't probable that the hotel will fill up over night; and I feel personally responsible for this state of things. Who would ever have supposed that Niagara would be so empty ? I thought the place was throng- ed the whole summer. How do you account for it, Richard ?" The gentleman looked fatigued, as from a long-coatin- ^ ued discussion else- where of the matter in hand, and he said that he had not been trying to account for it. "Then you don't care for Kitty's pleasure at all, and you don't want her to enjoy herself. Why don't you take some interest in the matter?" " Why, if I accounted for the emptiness of Niagara in the most satisfactory way, it wouldn't add a soul to the floating popu- lation. Under the circumstances, I prefer to leave it unex- plained." " Do you think it's because it's such a hot summer? Do you suppose it's not exactly the season ? Didn't you expect there'd THE PORTER. 124 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. be more people ? Perhaps Niagara isn't as fashionable as it used to be." "It looks something like that." '• Well, what under the sun do you think is the reason ?" "I don't know." " Perhaps," interposed Kitty, placidly, " most of the visitors go to the other hotel now." " It's altogether likely," said the other lady eagerly. '' There are just such caprices." " I wanted you to go there." " But you said that you always heard this was the most fashionable." " I know it. I didn't want to come here for that reason. But fortune favors the brave." " Well," said Richard, 7 v^ ^ / /. " Well, it's too bad ! Here we've asked Kitty to come to Niagara with us, just to give her a little peep into the world, and you've brought us to a hotel where we're — " " Monarchs of all we survey," sug- gested Kitty. " Yes, and start at the sound of our own," added the other lady, helplessly. I )jf \^ " Come, now, Fanny," said the gen- ' tleman, who was but too clearly the husband of the last speaker, " you know you insisted, against all I could say or do, upon coming to this house ; I implored you to go to the other, and now you blame me for bringing you here." " So I do. If you'd let me have my own way without opposi- tion about coming here, I dare say I should have gone to the other place. But never mind; Kitty knows whom to blame, I hope. She's jw/;r cousin." Kitty was sitting with her hands quiescently folded in her lap. She now rose, and said that she did not know anything about the other hotel, and perhaps it was just as empty as this. " It can't be. There can't be tzuo hotels so empty," said Fanny. " It don't stand to reason." "If you wish Kitty to see the world so much" said TRYING TO UNDERSTAND A WOMAN. 125 the gentleman, "why don't you take her on to Quebec with us ?" Kitty had left her seat beside Fanny, and was moving with a listless content about the parlor. "I wonder you ask, Richard, when you know she's only come for the night, and has nothing with her but a few cuffs and col- lars 1 I certainly never heard of anything so absurd before !" The absurdity of the idea then seemed to cast its charm upon her; for, after a silence, "I could lend her some things," she said, musingly. "But don't speak of it to-night, please. It's too ridiculous. Kitty!" she called out, and, as the young lady drew near, she continued, " How would you like to go to Quebec with us ?" " O Fanny !" cried Kitty, with rapture; and then, with dismay, « How can I !" " Why, very well, I think. You've got this dress, and your traveling-suit, and I can lend you whatever you want. Come 1" she added joyously, ''let's go up to your room, and talk it over !" The two ladies vanished upon this impulse, and the gentle- man followed. To their own relief the guiltless eavesdroppers, who had found no moment favorable for revealing themselves after the comedy began, issued from their retiracy. "What a remarkable little lady !" said Basil, eagerly turning to Isabel for sympathy in his enjoyment of her inconsequence. " Yes, poor thing !" returned his wife ; " it's no light matter to invite a young lady to take a journey with you, and promise her all sorts of gayety, and perhaps beaux and flirtations, and thon find her on your hands in a desolation like this. It's dreadful, I think." Basil stared. " O, certainly," he said. "But what an amus- ingly illogical little body !" " I don't understand what you mean, Basil. It was the only thing that she could do, to invite the young lady to go on with them. I wonder her husband had the sense to think of it first. Of course she'll have to lend her things." "And you didn't observe anything peculiar in herway of reach- ing her conclusions ?" " Peculiar ? What do you mean ?" " Why, her blaming her husband for letting her have her own I 26 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. way about the hotel; and her telling him not to mention his proposal to Kitty, and then donig it herself, just after she'd pro- nounced it absurd and impossible." He spoke with heat at being forced to make what he thought a needless explanation. " O," said Isabel, after a moment's reflection, " That! Did you think it so very odd ?" Her husband looked at her with the gravity a man must feel when he begins to perceive that he has married the whole mysti- fying world of womankind in the woman of his choice, and made no answer. But to his own soul he said: " I supposed I had the pleasure of my wife's acquaintance. It seems I have been flat- tering myself." A FEMALE BASE-BALL CLUB. BY JAMES M. BAILEY. ^T A:\IES MONTGOMERY BAILEY, so widely known as the Danbury ^-^ Alti/j- Man, was born at Albany, N. Y., September 25, 1841, and after receivin;^ a common-school education, learned the carpenter's trade. Hefought through the war in a Connecticut regiment, and settled in Danbury at the close as editor of the News. The only attempt on record of Danbury trying to organize a female base-ball club occurred last week. It was a rather incip- ient affair, but it demonstrated everything necessary, and in that particular answered every purpose. The idea was cogitated and carried out by six young ladies. It was merely designed for an experiment on which to base future action. The young ladies were at the house of one of their number when the subject was brought up. The premises are capacious, and include quite a piece of turf, hidden from the street by several drooping, luxu- riant, old-fashioned apple-trees. The young lady of the house has a brother who is fond of base-ball, and has the necessary machinery for a game. This was taken out on the turf under the trees. The ladies assembled, and divided themselves into two nines of three each. The first three took the bat, and the second three went to the bases, one as catcher, one as pitcher, and the other as chaser, or, more technically, fielder. The pitcher A FEMALE BASE-BALL CLUB. 127 was a lively brunette, with eyes full of dead earnestness. The catcher and batter were blondes, with faces aflame with expecta- tion. The pitcher took the ball, braced herself, put her arm straight out from her shoulder, then moved it around to her back without modifying in the least its delightful rigidity, and then threw it. The batter did not catch it. This was owing to the pitcher looking directly at the batter when she aimed it. The fielder got a long pole and soon succeeded in poking the ball from an apple-tree back of the pitcher, where it had lodged. Business was then resumed again, although with a faint sem- blance of uneasiness generally visible. A FEMALE BASE-BALL CLUB. The pitcher was very red in the face, and said " I declare ! " several times. This time she took a more careful aim, but still neglected to look in some other direction than toward the batter, and the ball was presently poked out of another tree. " Why, this is dreadful ! " said the batter, whose nerves had been kept at a pretty stiff tension. '* Perfectly dreadful ! " chimed in the catcher, with a long sigh. '< I think you had better get up in one of the trees," mildly suggested the fielder to the batter. The observations somewhat nettled the pitcher, and she declared she would not try again, whereupon a change was made I 28 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. with the fielder. She was certainly more sensible. Just as soon as she was ready to let drive, she shut her eyes so tight as to loosen two of her puffs and pull out her back comb, and madly fired away. The ball flew directly at the batter, which so startled that lady, who had the bat clinched in both hands with desperate grip, that she involuntarily cried, "Oh, my ! " and let it drop, and ran. This movement uncovered the catcher, who had both hands extended about three feet apart, in readiness for the catch, but being intently absorbed in studying the coil on the back of the batter's head, she was not able to recover in time, and the ball caught her in the bodice with sufficient force to deprive her of all her breath, which left her lips with earpiercing shrillness. There was a lull in the proceedings for ten minutes, to enable the other members of the club to arrange their hair. The batter again took position, when one of the party, discov- ering that she was holding the bat very much as a woman carries a broom when she is after a cow in the garden, showed her that the tip must rest on the ground and at her side, with her body a trifle inclined in that direction. The suggester took the bat and showed just how it was done, and brought around the bat with such vehemence as to almost carry her from her feet, and to nearly brain the catcher. That party shivered, and moved back some fifteen feet. The batter took her place, and laid the tip of the bat on the ground, and the pitcher shut her eyes again as tightly as before, and let drive. The fielder had taken the precaution to get back of a tree, or otherwise she must have been disfigured for life. The ball was recovered. The pitcher looked heated and vexed. She didn't throw it this time. She just gave it a pitching motion, but not letting go of it in time it went over her head, and caused her to sit down with considerable unexpectedness. Thereupon she declared she would never throw another ball as long as she lived, and changed off with the catcher. This young lady was somewhat determined, which augured success. Then she looked in an altogether different direction from that to the batter. And this did the business. The batter was ready. She had a tight hold on the bat. Just as soon as she saw the ball start, she made a tremendous lunge with the bat, let go of it, and turned around in time to catch the ball in the small of her back, while THE ROBIN AND THE WOODPECKER. 129 the bat, being on its own hook, and seeing a stone figure holding a vase of flowers, neatly clipped off its arm at the elbow and let the flowers to the ground. There was a chorus of screams, and some confusion of skirts, and then the following dialogue took place: No. I. " Let's give up the nasty thing." No. 2. " Let's." No. 3. "So I say." No. 4. " It's just horrid." This being a majority, the adjournment was made. The game was merely an experiment. And it is just as well it was. Had it been a real game, it is likely that some one would have been killed outright. WOMAN. BY JOSH BILLINGS. Woman iz the glass ware ov kreashun. She iz luvly, and brittle, but she hez run up everything we really enjoy in this life from 25 cents on the dollar to par. Adam, without Eve, would hav been az stupid a game az playing checkures alone. Thare haz been more butiful things sed in her praze than thare haz ov enn}'^ other animate thing, and she is worthy ov them all. She is not an angel 1 tho, and i hope she wont never go into the angel 1 bizz- ness. Angells on earth dont pay. The only mistake that woman haz ever made iz to think she iz a better man than Adam. THE ROBIN AND THE WOODPECKER. BY BIERCE. A WOODPECKER, who had bored a multitude of holes in the body of a dead tree, was asked by a robin to explain their pur- pose. " As yet, in the infancy of science," replied the woodpecker, " I am quite unable to do so. Some naturalists affirm that I hide acorns in these pits; others maintain that I get worms out I30 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. of them. I endeavored for some time to reconcile the two theo- ries; but the worms ate my acorns, and then would not come out. Since then I have left science to work out its own prob- lems, while I work out the holes. I hope the final decision may be in some way advantageous to me; for at my nest I have a number of prepared holes which I can hammer into some suita- ble tree at a moment's notice. Perhaps I could insert a few into the scientific head." 1^-^F'V. THE ROBIN AND THE WOODPECKER. "No-o-o," said the robin, reflectively, "I should think noL A prepared nole is an idea; I don't think it could get in." Moral. — It might be driven in with a steam-hammer. I don't reckolekt ov ever doing ennything that i waz just a little ashamed ov, but what sum one waz sure to remember it, and every once in a while put me in mind of it. Josh Billings. Tl^E TAR BABY. 131 THE TAR BABY. BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. •tOEL chandler HARRIS was born at Eatonton, Ga., December 9, ®^ 1848, and learned the printing business in the office of The Country mat/, a paper published on a plantation, ten miles from any railroad. He there acquainted himself with the negro folk-lore, which he afterwards used in the "Nights with Uncle Remus." These sketches, now of a world-wide celebrity, first appeared in the Atlanta Constitution. One evening recently, the lady whom Uncle Remus calls " Miss Sally " missed her little seven-year-old. Making search for him through the house and through the yard, she heard the sound of voices in the old man's cabin, and, look- ing through the window, saw the child sitting by 4(.V Uncle Remus. His head rested against the old man's arm, and he was gazing with an expression of the most intense interest into the rough, weather-beaten face that beamed so kindly upon him. This is what "Miss Sally" heard: " Bimeby, one day, arter Brer Fox bin doin' all dat he could fer ter ketch Brer Rabbit, en Brer Rabbit bin doin' all he could fer ter keep 4m fum it, Brer Fox say to hisse'f dat he'd put up a game on Brer Rabbit, en he ain't mo'n twel Brer Rabbit come a lopin' UNCLE REMUS. got up de de wuds out'n his mout big road, lookin' des 1 3 2 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAR V OF HUMOR. ez plump en ez fat en ez sassy ez a Moggin hoss in a barley- patch. " ' Hoi' on, dar, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "' I ain't got time, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, sorter mendin' his licks. " ' I wanter have some confab wid you. Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'AH right. Brer Fox; but you better holler fum whar you Stan'. I'm monstus full er fleas dis mawnin',' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. " ' I seed Brer B'ar yistiddy,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, ' en he sorter rake me over de coals kaze you en me ain't make frens en live naberly; en I tole 'im dat I'd see you.' " Den Brer Rabbit scratch one year wid his off hine-foot sorter jub'usly, en den he ups en sez, sezee: "'AH a settin', Brer Fox. Spose'n you drap roun' ter-morrer en take dinner wid me. We ain't got no great doin's at our house, but I speck de ole 'oman en de chilluns kin sorter scram- ble roun' en git up somp'n fer ter stay yo' stummuck.' " ' I'm 'gree'ble, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. " ' Den I'll 'pen' on you,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. " Nex' day, Mr. Rabbit an' Miss Rabbit got up soon, 'fo' day, en raided on a gyarden, like Miss Sally's out dar, en got some cabbiges, en some roas'n years, en some sparrer-grass, en dey fix up a smashin' dinner. Bimeby, one er de little Rabbits playin' out in de back-yard, come runnin' in, hoHerin', ' Oh, ma ! oh, ma ! I seed Mr. Fox a comin' ! ' En den Brer Rabbit he tuck de chilluns by der years en make um set down; en den him en Miss Rabbit sorter dally roun' waitin' for Brer Fox. En dey keep on waitin', but no Brer Fox ain't come. Atter 'while Brer Rab- bit goes to de do', easy like, en peep out, en dar, stickin' out fum behine de cornder, wuz de tip-een' er Brer Fox's tail Den Brer Rabbit shot de do' en sot down, en put his paws behime his years en begin fer ter sing: " ' De place wharbouts you spill de grease, Right dar youer boun' ter slide, An' whar you fine a bunch er ha'r, You'll sholy fine de hide.' " Nex' day, Brer Fox sent word by Mr. Mink, en skuze his- se'f, kase he wuz too sick fer ter come, en he ax Brer Rabbit THE TAR BABY. 133 fer ter come en take dinner wid him, en Brer Rabbit say he wuz 'gree'ble. "Bimeby, w'en de shadders wuz at der shortes', Brer Rabbit he sorter brush up en santer down ter Brer Fox's house, en w'en he got dar, he yer somebody groanin', en he look in de do' en dar he see Brer Fox settin' up in a rockin' -cheer all wrop up wid flannil, en he look mighty weak. Brer Rabbit look all 'roun', he did, but he ain't see no dinner. De dish-pan wuz settin' on de table, en close by wuz a kyarvin'-knife. " ' Look like you gwinter have chicken fer dinner, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. " ' Yes, Brer Rabbit, deyer nice en fresh en tender,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. *' Den Brer Rabbit sorter pull his mustarsh, en say: 'You ain't got no calamus root, is you. Brer Fox ? I done got so now dat I can't eat no chicken 'ceptin she's seasoned up wid calamus root." En wid dat. Brer Rabbit lipt out er de do' and dodge 'mong de bushes, en sot dar watchin' fer Brer Fox; en he ain't watch long, nudder, kaze Brer Fox flung off de flannel en crope out er de house en got whar he could close in on Brer Rabbit, en bimeby Brer Rabbit holler out: ' Oh, Brer Fox ! I'll des put yo' calamus root out yer on dish yer stump. Better come git it while it's fresh,' an' wid dat Brer Rabbit gallop off home. En Brer Fox ain't never kotch 'im yit, en w'at's mo', honey, he ain't gwineter." II. " Didn't the fox never catch the rabbit. Uncle Remus ? " asked the little boy the next evening. '' He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho's you bawn — Brer Fox did. One day, atter Brer Rabbit fool 'im wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en got 'im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun wat he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuck dish yer Tar-Baby en he sot 'er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer ter see wat de news wuz gwineter be. En he didn't hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin' down de road — lippity-clippity, clippity- lippity — dez ez sassy ez a jay-bird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer 134 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Rabbit come prancin' 'long twel he spy de Tar-Baby', en d ii he fetch up on his behime legs like he wuz 'stonished. De Tar- Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low. " ' Mawnin'! ' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee — ' nice wedder dis mawn- in'/ sezee. "Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low. " '■ How duz yo' sym'tums seem ter segashuate ? ' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. BRER RABBIT CAUGHT. " Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'. " ' How you come on, den? Is you deaf?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ' Kaze if you is, I kin holler louder,' sezee. " Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low. ** * Youer stuck up, dat's w'at you is,' says Brer Rabbit, sezee, * en I'm gwineter kyore j^ou, dat's w'at I'm gwineter do,' sezee. " Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummuck, he did, but Tar- Baby ain't sayin' nuthin'. THE TAR BABY. j,- " 'I'm gwineter larn you howter talk ter 'specttubble fokes ef hit's de las' ack,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Ef you don't take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I'm gwineter bus' you wide open,' sezee. " Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low. "Brer Rabbit keep on axin' 'im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin' nuthin', twel present'y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis', he did, en blip he tuck 'er side 'er de head. Right dar's whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis' stuck, en he can't pull loose. De tar hilt 'im. But Tar-Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low. " ' Ef you don't lemme loose, I'll knock you agin,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch 'er a wipe wid de udder han', en dat stuck. Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low. " 'Tu'n me loose, fo' I kick de natal stuffin' outen you,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'. She des hilt on, en den Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer Fox, he lay low. Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby don't tu'n 'im loose he butt 'er cranksided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer Fox, he sa'ntered fort', lookin' des ez innercent ez wunner yo' mammy's mockin'-birds. " ' Howdy, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. ' You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin',' sezee, en den he rolled on de groun', en laft en laft twel he couldn't laff no mo'. ' I speck you'll take dinner wid me dis time. Brer Rabbit. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain't gwineter take no skuse,' sez Brer Fox, sezee." Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two-pound yam out of the ashes. " Did the fox eat the rabbit ? " asked the little boy to whom the story had been told. " Dat' s all de fur de tale goes," replied the old man. "He mout, en den agin he mountent. Some say JedgeB'arcome 'long en loosed 'im — some say he didn't. I hear Miss Sally callin'. You better run 'long." x.j6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR, DICK BAKER'S CAT. BY MARK TWAIN. One of my comrades there — another of those victims of eighteen years of unrequited toil and blighted hopes — was one of the gentlest spirits that ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile : grave and simple Dick Baker, pocket-miner of Dead House Gulch. He was forty-six, gray as a rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated, slouchily dressed and clay-soiled, but his heart was finer metal than any gold his shovel ever brought to light — than any, indeed, that ever was mined or minted. Whenever he was out of hick and a little down - hearted, he would fall to mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women and children are not, men of kindly im- pulses take up with pets, for they must iove something). And he always spoke of the strange saga- ., city of that cat with ■4j^-^ _ the air of a man who \ 'SM«. — — believed in his secret heart that there was something human about it — may be even supernatural. I heard him talk- about this animal once. He said : " Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here by the name of Tom Quartz, which you'd a took an interest in I reckon — most any body would. I had him here eight year — and he was the re- markablest cat / ever see. He was a large gray one of the Tom specie, an' he had more hard, natchral sense than any man in this camp — 'n' a. power oi dignity — he wouldn't let the Gov'ner of Californy be familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his SHOVING FOR HOME, mg DICK BAKER- S CAT. m life— 'peared to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining. He knowed more about mining, that cat did, than any man /ever, ever see. You couldn't tell him noth'n' 'bout placer diggin's— 'n' as for pocket-raining, why he was just born for it. He would dig out after me an' Jim when we went over the hills prospect'n', and he would trot along behind us for as much as five mile, if we went so fur. An' he had the best judgment about mining ground — why you never see anything like it. When we went to work, he'd scatter a glance around, ^ 'n' if he didn't think much of the indications, he would give a look as much to say, 'Well, I'll have to get you to excuse me^ 'n' without another word he'd hyste his nose into the air 'n' shove for home. But if the ground suited him, he would lay low 'n' keep dark till the first pan was washed, 'n' then he would sidle up 'n' take a look, an' if there was about six or seven grains of gold he was satisfied — he didn't want no better prospect 'n' that — 'n' then he would lay down on our coats and snore like a steamboat till Vv'e'd struck X, the pocket, an' then get up 'n' superintend. He was nearly light- nin' on superin- tending. "Well, bye an' bye, up comes this going up. yer quartz excite- ment. Everybody was into it — everybody was pick'n' 'n' blast'n' instead of shovelin' dirt on the hill-side — everybody was put'n' down a shaft instead of scrapm' the surface. Noth'n' would do Jim but lue must tackle the ledges, too, 'n' so we did. We commenced put'n' down a shaft, 'n' Tom Quartz he begin to wonder what in the dickens it was all about. He hadn't ever seen any mining like that before, 'n' he was all upset, as you I ^8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. may say — he couldn't come to a right understanding of it no way — it was too many for ]iim. He was down on it, too, you bet you — he was down on it powerful — 'n' always appeared to con- sider it the cussedest foolishness out. But that cat, you know, was always agin new-fangled arrangements — somehow he never could abide 'em. You know how it is with old habits. But bye an' bye Tom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little, though he never could altogether understand that eternal sinkin' of a shaft an' never pannin' out anything. At last he got to comin' down in the shaft hisself, to try to cipher it out. An' when he'd git the bliies, 'n' feel kind o' scruffy, 'n' aggravated 'n' disgusted — knowin', as he did, that the bills was runnin' up all the time an' we warn't makin' a cent — he would curl up on a gunny sack in the corner an' go to sleep. Well, one day when the shaft was down about eight foot, the rock got so hard that we had to put in a blast — the first blast' n' we'd ever done since Tom Quartz was born. An' then we lit the fuse 'n' dumb out 'n' o-ot off 'bout fifty yards — 'n' forgot 'n' left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunny sack. In 'bout a minute we seen a puff of smoke bust up out of the hole, 'n' then everything let go with an awful crash, 'n' about four million ton of rocks 'n' dirt 'n' smoke 'n' splinters shot up 'bout a mile an' a half into the air, an' by George, right in the dead centre of it was old Tom Quartz a goin' end over end, an' a snortin' an' a sneez'n', an' a clawin' an' a reachin' for things like all possessed. But it warn't no use, you know, it warn't no use. An' that was the last we see of him for about two minutes 'n' a half, an' then all of a sudden it begin to rain rocks and rubbage, an' directly he come down ker-whop about ten foot off f'm where we stood. Well, I reckon he was p'raps the orneriest lookin' beast you ever see. One ear was sot back on his neck, 'n' his tail was stove up, 'n' his eye-winkers was swinged off, 'n' he was all blacked up with powder an' smoke, an' all sloppy with mud 'n' slush f m one end to the other. Well, sir, it warn't no use to try to apologize^we couldn't say a word. He took a sort of a disgusted look at hisself, 'n' then he looked at us — an' it was just exactly the same as if he had said — ' Gents, maybe you think it's smart to take advantage of a cat that 'ain't had no experience of quartz minin', but / think differenf — an' then he turned on his heel 'n' marched off home without ever say- ing another word. THE HAOWTED ROOM. I ^g ** That was jest his style. An' maybe you won't believe it but after that you never see a cat so prejudiced agin quartz min- ing as what he was. An' bye an' bye when he did get to goin' down in the shaft agin, you'd 'a been astonished at his sagacity. The minute we'd fetch off a blast 'n' the fuse'd begin to sizzle he'd give a look as much as to say : ' Well, I'll have to git you to excuse 7ne,' an' it was surpris'n' the way he'd shin out of that hole 'n' go f'r a tree. Sagacity ? It ain't no name for it. 'Twas inspiration ! " I said, " Well, Mr. Baker, his prejudice against quartz-mining was remarkable, considering how he came by it. Couldn't you ever cure him of it ? " *' Cure him ! No ! When Tom Quartz was sot once, he was ahvays sot — and you might a blowed him uo as much as three million times, 'n' you'd never a broken him of his cussed preju- dice agin quartz mining." Avoiding eccentricity : ''No," said the bank cashier, "I didn't need the money. I wasn't speculating. I had no necessity for stealing it. But, hang it, I didn't want to be called eccentric." — Boston Post. THE HAUNTED ROOM. R. J. BURDETTE, Once, in the dead heart of the pitiless winter, I had drawn my good two-handed Lecture with the Terrible Name, and was smit- ing all the coasts of Pennsylvania with it, sparing neither (pro- nounced nyther) young nor old, and wearing at my belt the scalps of many a pale-face audience. One night I reached Erie the pleasant, just as the clock in the Lord Mayor's castle struck twenty-one. It was bitter, biting, stinging cold, and there was no ambulance at the station, while there was a good hotel there. I went in and registered, and a man of commanding presence, tailor-built clothes and a brown beard of most refined culture, followed me, and under my plebeian scrawl, made the register luminous with his patrician cognomen. I stood a little in awe of this majestic creature, and when in a deep, bass, commanding 140 MARK- TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. voice he ordered a room, I had a great mind — something I always carry with me when I travel — to go out and get him one. The gentlemanly and urbane night clerk, who also seemed to be deeply impressed — as is the habit of the night clerk — with the gentleman's responsible to any amount toot on sawmbel, said he was sorry, but he had but one vacant room, and it contained but one bed. " Still," he said, as became a man who was bound to stand for his house if it hadn't a bed in it, " it was a wide bed, very wide and quite long. Two gentlemen could sleep in it quite comfortably, and if ." But the Comm.anding Being at my side said that was quite altogether out of the question entirely. Quite. He was sorry for the — here he looked at me, hesitated, but finally said — gentleman, but He couldn't share His room with him. He was sorry for the — gentleman, and hoped he might find comfortable lodgmgs, but He couldn't permit him to occupy even a portion of His bed. Then the clerk begged pardon, and was sorry, and all that, but this other gentleman had registered first, and it was for him to say what disposition should be made of this lonely room and solitary bed. I hastened to assure the majestic being that it was all right: he was welcome to two- thirds of the room, all of the looking-glass and one-half of the bed. " No," he said, very abruptly, " I will sit here by the stove and sleep in my chair. I thank you, sir, but I would not sleep with my own brother. I prefer a room to myself." I meekly told him that I didn't know what kind of a man his brother was, but no doubt he did, and therefore I must conclude that he wasn't a fit man to sleep with. But his brother was out of the question, and if he wanted part of my couch, he might have it and welcome, and I would agree not to think of the brother. "No, sir," he said, "I will sleep m no man's bed." I said I wouldn't either, if I wasn't sleepy, but when I was sleepy, I didn't care; I'd sleep with the King of England or the President, and wouldn't care a cent who knew it. COMFORTABLY SETTLED. THE HAUNTED ROOM. \\X Well, I went to bed. I durled up under the warm, soft blankets, and heard the v/ind shriek and wail and whistle and yell — how like all creation the wind can blow in Erie — and as the night grew colder and colder every minute, I fell asleep and dreamed that heaven was just forty-eight miles west of Dunkirk. About 2: 30 or 3 o'clock there came a thundering rap at the door, and with a vague, half-waking impression in my dream that somebody from the other place was trying to get in, I said: "What is it?" "It is I," answered a splen- did voice, which I recognized at once. " I am the gentle- man who came on the train with you." " Yes," I said, " and what is the matter ? " The splendid voice was a trifle humble as it replied: "I have changed my mind about sleeping with another man." " So have I ? " I howled so joyously that the very winds laughed in merry echo. " So have I ! I wouldn't get out of this warm bed to open that door for my own brother! " I will close this story herq. If I should write the language that went down that dim, cold hall outside my door you wouldn't print it. And when next morning I went skipping down-stairs as fresh as a rose, and saw that majestic being knotted up in a hard arm-chair, looking a hundred years old, I said: *' Better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king, who knoweth not how to be admonished. For out of prison he Cometh to reign; whereas, also, he that is born ,in his kingdom becometh poor." This is also vanity. HUMILIATED. 142 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. A RESTLESS NIGHT. BY MARK TWAIN. We were in bed by ten, for we wanted to be up and away on our tramp homeward with the dawn. I hung fire, but Harris went to sleep at once. I hate a man who goes to sleep at once; there is a sort of indefinable something about it which is not exactly an insult, and yet is an insolence; and one which is hard to bear, too. I lay there fretting over this injury, and trying to go to sleep; but the harder I tried, the wider awake I grew. I got to feeling very lonely in the dark, with no company but an undi- gested dinner. My mind got a start, by and by, and began to consider the beginning of every subject which has ever been thought of; but it never went further than the beginning; it was touch and go; it fled from topic to topic with a frantic speed. At the end of an hour my head was in a perfect whirl and I was dead tired, fagged out. The fatigue was so great that it presently began to make some head against the nervous excitement; while imagining myself wide awake, I would really doze into momentary unconscious- nesses, and come suddenly out of them with a physical jerk which nearly wrenched my joints apart — the delusion of the instant being that I was tumbling backwards over a precipice. After I had fallen over eight or nine precipices, and thus found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight or nine times withoul the wide-awake, hard-working other half suspecting it, the period- ical unconsciousnesses began to extend their spell gradually over more of my brain-territory, and at last I sank into a drowsy which grew deeper and deeper, and was doubtless on the verj point of becoming a solid, blessed, dreaming stupor, when — what was that ? My dulled faculties dragged themselves partly back to life and took a receptive attitude. Now out of an immense, a limit- less distance, came a something which grew and grew, and approached, and presently was recognizable as a sound — it had rather seemed to be a feeling, before. This sound was a mile away, now — perhaps it was the murmur of a storm ; and now it was nearer — not a quarter of a mile away; was it the muffled A RESTLESS NIGHT. 143 rasping and grinding of distant machinery ? No, it came still nearer; was it the measured tramp of a marching troop ? But it came nearer still, and still nearer — and at last it was right in the room : it was merely a mouse gnawing the wood-work. So I had held my breath all that time for such a trifle ! Well, what was done could not be helped; I would go to sleep at once and make up the lost time. That was a thoughtless thought. Without intending it — hardly knowing it — I fell to listening intently to that sound, and even unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse's nutmeg-grater. Presently I was deriving exquisite suffering from this employment, yet maybe I could have endured it if the mouse had attended steadily to his work : but he did not do that ; he Stopped every now and then, and I suffered more while waiting and listen- ing for him to begin again than I did while he was gnawing. Along at first I was mentally offering a reward of five — six — seven — ten — dollars for that mouse; but toward the last I was offer- ing rewards which were entirely be- yond my means. I close-reefed my ears — that is to say, I bent the flaps of them down and furled them into five or six folds, and pressed them against the hearing-orifice — but it did no good: the faculty was so sharpened by practicing on a mouse. nervous excitement that it was be- come a microphone, and could hear through the overlays with- out trouble. My anger grew to a frenzy. I finally did what all persons be- fore have done, clear back to Adam — resolved to throw some- thing. I reached down and got my walking shoes, then sat up in bed and listened, in order to exactly locate the noise. But I couldn't do it; it was as unlocatable as a cricket's noise; and where one thinks that that is, is always the very place where it isn't. So I presently hurled a shoe at random, and with a vicious 144 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. vigor. It struck the wall over Harris's head and fell down on him; I had not imagined I could throw so far. It woke Harris, and I was glad of it until I found he was not angry; then I was sorry. He soon went to sleep again, which pleased me; but straightway the mouse began again, which roused my temper once more. I did not want to wake Harris a second time, but the gnawing continued until I was compelled to throw the other shoe. This time I broke a mirror — there were two in the room — I got the largest one, of course. Harris woke again, but did not complain, and I was sorrier than ever. I resolved that I would suffer all possible torture, before I would disturb him a third time. The mouse eventually retired, and by and by I was sinking to sleep, when a clock began to strike ; I counted, till it was done, and was about to drowse again when another clock began ; I counted ; then the two great Rathhaus clock angels began to send forth soft, rich, melodious blasts from their long trumpets. I had never heard anything that was so lovely, or weird, or mys- terious—but when they got to blowing the quarter-hours, they seemed to me to be overdoing the thing. Every time I dropped off for a moment, a new noise woke me. Each time I woke I missed my coverlet, and had to reach down to the floor and get it agam. At last all sleepiness forsook me. I recognized the fact that I was hopelessly and permanently wide awake. Wide awake, and feverish and thirsty. When I had lain tossing there as long as I could endure it, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to dress and go out in the great square and take a refreshing wash in the fountain, and smoke and reflect there until the rem- nant of the night was gone. I believed I could dress in the dark without waking Harris. I had banished my shoes after the mouse, but my slippers would do for a summer night. So I rose softly, and gradually got on everything — down to one sock. I couldn't seem to get on the track of that sock, any way I could fix it. But I had to have it; so I went down on my hands and knees, with one slipper on and the other in my hand, and began to paw gently around and rake the floor, but with no success. I enlarged my circle, and went on pawing and raking. With every pressure of my knee, how the floor creaked ! and every time I chanced to rake against any A RESTLESS NIGHT. 145 article, it seemed to give out thirty-five or thirty-six times more noise than it would have done in the daytime. In those cases I always stopped and held my breath till I was sure Harris had not awakened — then I crept along again. I moved on and on, but I could not find the sock ; I could not seem to find anything but furniture. I could not remember that there was much furniture in the room when I went to bed, but the place was alive with it now — especially chairs — chairs everywhere — had a couple of families moved in, in the meantime ? And I never could seem to glance on one of those chairs, but always struck it full and square with my head. My temper rose, by steady and sure degrees, and as I pawed on and on, I fell to making vicious com- ments under my breath. Finally, with a venomous access of irritation, I said I would leave without the sock ; so I rose up and made straight for tlie door — as I supposed — and suddenly confronted my dim spectral image in the unbroken mirror. It startled the Dreath out of me for an instant ; it also showed me that I was lost, and had no sort of idea where I was. When I realized this, I was so angry that I had to sit down on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off with an explosion of opinion. If there had been only one mirror, it might possibly have helped to locate me ; but there were two, and two were as bad as a thousand ; besides, these were on opposite sides of the room. I could see the dim blur of the windows, but in my turned-around condition they were exactly where they ought not to be, and so they only confused me instead of helping me. I started to get up, and knocked down an umbrella ; it made a noise like a pistol-shot when it struck that hard, slick, carpetless floor ; I grated my teeth and held my breath — Harris did not stir. I set the umbrella slowly and carefully on end against the wall, but as soon as I took my hand away, its heel slipped from under it, and down it came again with another bang. I shrunk together and listened a moment in silent fury— no harm done, everything quiet. With the most painstaking care and nicety I stood the umbrella up once more, took my hand away, and down it came again. I have been strictly reared, but if it had not been so dark and solemn and awful there in that lonely vast room, I do believe I should have said something then which could not be put into a 146 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Sunday-school book without injuring the sale of it. If my rea- soning powers had not been already sapped dry by my harass- ments, I would have known better than to try to set an umbrella on end on one of those glassy German floors in the dark ; it FORTY-SEVEN MILES. can't be done in the daytime without four failures to one success. I had one comfort, though — Harris was yet still and silent; he had not stirred. The umbrella could not locate me — there were four standing- A RESTLESS NIGHT. 147 around the room, and all alike. I thought I would feel along the wall and find the door in that way. I rose up and began this operation, but raked down a picture. It was not a large one, but it made noise enough for a panoram.a. Harris gave out no sound, but I felt that if I experimented any further with the pictures I should be sure to wake him. Better give up trying to get out. Yes, I would find King Arthur's Round Table once more — I had already found it several times — and use it for a base of departure on an exploring tour for my bed ; if I could find my bed I could then find my water pitcher ; I would quench my raging thirst and turn in. So I started on my hands and knees, because I could go faster that way, and with more confi- dence, too, and not knock down things. By and by I found the table — with my head — rubbed the bruise a little, then rose up and started, with hands abroad and fingers spread, to balance my- self. I found a chair ; then the wall ; then another chair ; then a sofa ; then an alpenstock, then another sofa ; this confounded me, for I had thought there was only one sofa. I hunted up the table again and took a fresh start ; found some more chairs. It occurred to me now, as it ought to have done before, that as the table was round, it was therefore of no value as a base to aim from ; so I moved off once more, and at random, among the wilderness of chairs and sofas — wandered off into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked a candlestick off a mantel-piece ; grabbed at the candle-stick and knocked off a lamp ; grabbed at the lamp and knocked off a water-pitcher with a rattlmg crash, and thought to myself, "I've found you at last — I judged I was close upon you." Harris shouted "murder," and "thieves," and finished with " I'm absolutely drowned." The crash had roused the house. Mr. X. pranced in, in his long night garment, with a candle, young Z. after him with another candle ; a procession swept in at another door, with candles and lanterns; landlord and two German guests in their nightgowns, and a chambermaid in hers. I looked around ; I was at Harris's bed, a Sabbath day's jour- ney from my own. There was only one sofa ; it was against the wail ; there was only one chair where a body could get at it — I had been revolving around it like a planet, and colliding with it like a comet half the night. I explained how I had been employing myself, and why. 1 48 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Then the landlord's party left, and the rest of us set about our preparations for breakfast, for the dawn was ready to break. I glanced furtively at my pedometer, and found I had made forty- seven miles. But I did not care, for I had come out for a pedestrian tour anyway. RIP VAN WINKLE. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. TV'^ASHINGTON IRVING, author of the " Knickerbocker History of New York, " " Life of Columbus," " Conquest of Granada," " Sketch Book," " Bracebridge Hall," and many other famous works, was born at New York in 1783, and early showed his aptitude for literature, although he studied law and expected to make it his profession. His reputation as a light satirist was already established when he wrote the " Knickerbocker History," which gave him fame. In 1817 he went to Europe, and remained there till 1834, publish- ing many of his works in England, where his success was very great. He held the post of Secretary of Legation in London, and Minister at Madrid. In 1846 he retm-ned finally to America, and died at Sunnyside on the Hudson in 1859. Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are i-egarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barom- eters. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear even- ing sky; but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their sum- mits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory. At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle- roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. RIP VAN WINKLE. 149 It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by- some of the Dutch colonists, in the early tiiiies of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weather-cocks. In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple good-natured fellow of the name of \ Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inher ■ ited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient, hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some re- spects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clam- bering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood. I50 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aver- sion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even m the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word. Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible. In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm: it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and vrauld go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door work to do; so that, though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by sere, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm in the neighborhood. His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-o*^ galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather. Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trou- ble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears RIP VAN WINKLE. jcj about his idleness, his carelessness and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon and night her tongue was inces- santly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house — the only side which, in truth, belongs to a hen-pecked husband. Rip's old domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much hen - pecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods — but what courage can withstand the ever-duriiigand all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail dropped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broom-stick or ladle, he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation. Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrLmony rolled on ; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with con- stant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, phi'losophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated "by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any states- man's money to have heard the profound discussions that some- times took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper, learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how 152 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR, sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place ! The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nich- olas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door oi which he took hij seat from morn- ing till night, just moving sufficient- ly to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. H i s adherents, however (for every great man has his adher- ents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opin- ions. When any- thing that was NICHOLAS VEDDER. read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and some- times, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation. RIP VAN WINKLE. IC3 From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at leno-th routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break iu upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charo-ed him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness. Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympa- thized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. " Poor Wolf," he would say, " thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee ! " Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart. In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day. Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaats- kill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shoot- inar, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herb- age, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lag- ging bark, here and there sleeping on its grassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands. On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending clift's, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance 154 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. hallooing, " Rip Van Winkle ! Rip Van Winkle ! " He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air; " Rip Van Winkle ! Rip Van Winkle ! " — at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giv- ing a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and per- i^ ceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it. On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singular- ity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion — a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist — several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample vol- ume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance. Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, appar- ently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended. Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or, rather, cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mount- ain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by per- pendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence; for though the former marveled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity. RIP VAN WINKLE. jrc On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented chemselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd- looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar style with that of the o-uide's. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes: the face of another seemed to con- sist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a Vv'hite sugar-loaf hat set off with a little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be *^ the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather- beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings and high- heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement. What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Noth- ing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mount- ains like rumbling peals of thunder. As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre counte- nances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaft'ed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game. By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were over- AWAKING FROM A LONG SLEEP. 156 RIP VAN WINKLE. icy powered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined and he fell into a deep sleep. On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breast- ing the pure mountain breeze. "Surely," thought Rip, " I have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep : the strange man with a keg of liquor — the mountain ravine — the wild retreat among the rocks — the woe- begone party at nine-pins — the flagon — " Oh ! that flagon ! that wicked flagon ! " thought Rip — " what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle ! " He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean, well- oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had dis- appeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen. He determmed to revisit the scene of the last evening's gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. "These mount- ain beds do not agree with me," thought Rip, '' and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding even- ing; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foam- ing down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made a shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras and witch-hazel and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network m his path. At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through 1^8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAR V OF HUMOR. the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sport- ing high in air about a dr}' tree that overhung a sunny preci- pice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done ? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward. As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and, whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, mvoluntarily, to do the same, when, to his astonish- ment, he found his beard had grown a foot long ! He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recog- nized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors — strange faces at the windows — every- thing was strange. His mind now misgave him: he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the KaatskiU Mountains — there ran the silver Hudson at a distance — there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been — Rip was sorely perplexed— "That flagon last night," thought he, " has addled my poor head sadly I" RIP VAN WINKLE. j i-q It was with some difficulty tliat he found the way to his owa house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van AVinkle. He found the house gone to decay— the roof had fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed — "My very dog," sighed poor Rip, <-'has forgotten me! " He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears — he called loudly for his wife and children— the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence. He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the vil- lage inn — but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, " The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes — all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George,- under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and under- neath was painted in large characters, General Washington. There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches ; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place ol these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full oi 1 60 MARK TWAIN' ' S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR. handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens — elections — members of Congress — liberty — Bunker's Hill — heroes of Seventy-six — and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted ? " Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm., and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, " Whether he was Federal or Democrat ? " Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, " what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" — "Alas!" gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, " I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him! " Here a general shout burst from the by-standers — " a tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him! " It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern, "Well — who are they ? — name them." Rip thought himself a moment, and inquired, " Where's Nic- holas Vedder ? " There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the church-yard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too." RIP VAN WINKLE. l5l " Where's Brom Dutcher ? " " Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war ; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point — others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know — he never came back again." " Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster ?" "'He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress." Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enorm.ous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war — Congress — Stony Point — he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, " Does nobody here know Rip Van Wmkle ? " " Oh, Rip Van Winkle! " exclaimed two or three, " Oh, to be sure! that's Rip A^an Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as rag- ged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name ? "God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end; "I'm not myself — I'm somebody else — that's me yonder — no — that's some- body else got into my shoes — I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and every thing's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am! " The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipita- tion. At this critical raoment a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, " hush, you little fool; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recol- 1 62 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAR V OF HUMOR. lections in his mind. "What is your name, my good woman?'* asked he. "Judith Gardenier." " And your father's name ? " " Ah, poor man. Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since — his dog came home without him ; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl." , Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice: " Where's your mother ? " " Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler." There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. ''I am your father! " cried he — " Young Rip Van Winkle once — old Rip Van Winkle now ! Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?" All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, " Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor — why, where have you been these twenty long years ? " Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks: and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who^ when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head — upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage. It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the won- derful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mount- RIP VAN WINKLE. 163 ains had always been haunted by strange beings; that it was afifirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-Moon, being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name; that his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like dis- tant peals of thunder. To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well- furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm ; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business. Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the ris- ing generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times " before the war." It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a Revolutionary war — that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England — and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citi- zen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was — petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was 1 64 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAK Y OF HUMOR. mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance. He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awakened. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder- storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine-pins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked husbands in the neigh- borhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon. THE OSTRICH AND THE HEN. BY GEO. T. LANAGAN. An Ostrich and a Hen chanced to occupy adjacent apartments, and the former complained loudly that her rest was disturbed by the cackling of her humble neighbor. "Why is it," he finally asked the Hen, '* that you make such an intolerable noise ?" The Hen replied, "Because I have laid an &gg" "Oh, no," said the Ostrich, with a superior smile, " it is because you are a Hen, and don't know any better." Aloral. — The moral of the foregoing is not very clear, but it contains some reference to the Agitation for Female Suffrage. ■'J-^ THE OSTRICH AND THE HEN. l6s 1 66 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. WOMEN'S RIGHTS. BY ARTEMUS WARD. I piTCHT my tent in a small town in Injianny one day last see- son, & while I was standin at the dore takin money, a deppytashun of ladies came up & sed they wos members of the Bunkumville Female Reformin & Wimin's Rite's Associa- shun, and thay axed me if thay cood go in with- out payin. "Not exactly," sez I, "but you can pay with- out goin in." I " Dew you know who we air ?" said one of the wimin — a tall and fero- shus lookin critter, with a blew kotton umbreller under her arm — " do you know who we air, Sur ?" "My impreshun is," sed I, " from a kersery view, that you air fe- males." "We air, Sur," said the feroshus woman — " we belong to a Society whitch beleeves wimin has rites — whitch be- leeves in razin her to her proper speer — whitch beleeves she is indowed with as much intelleck as man is — whitch beleeves she is trampled on and aboozed — & who will resist hense4th & forever the incroachments of proud & domineering men." Durin her discourse, the exsentric female grabed me by the coat-kollor & was swinging her umbreller wildly over my head. A FEROSHUS LOOKIN CRITTER. WOMEN'S RIGHTS. 167 I hope, marm," sez I, starting back, "that your intensions is honorable ! I'm a lone man hear in a strange place. Besides I've a wife to hum." " Yes," cried the female, "■ & she's a slave ! Doth she never dream of freedom — doth she never think of throwin of the yoke of tyrrinny & thinkin & votin for herself ? — Doth she never think of these here things ? " " Not bein a natral born fool," sed I, by this time a little riled, ** I kin safely say that she dothunt." "Oh, whot — whot !" screamed the female, swinging her umbrel- ler in the air. " O, what is the price that woman pays for her expeeriunce ! " "I don't know," sez I; "the price of my show is 15 cents pur individooal." " & can't our Sosiety go in free ? " asked the female. "Not if I know it," sed I. '' Crooil, crooil man ! " she cried, & bust into teers. " Won't you let my darter in ? " sed anuther of the exsentric wimin, taken me afeckshunitely by the hand. " O, please let my darter in — shee's a sweet gushin child of natur." " Let her gush ! " roared I, as mad as I cood stick at their tar- nal nonsense — "let her gush!" Where upon they all sprung back with the simultanioys observashun that I was a Beest. "My female friends," sed I, " be4 you leeve, I've a few re- marks to remark; wa them well. The female woman is one of the greatest institooshuns of which this land can boste. It's on- possible to get along without her. Had there bin no female wimin in the world, I should scarcely be heiewith my unparaleld show on this very occashun. She is good in sickness — good in wellness — good all the time. O woman, woman ! " I cried, my feelins worked up to a hi poetick pitch, " You air a angle when you behave yourself; but when you take off your proper appairel & (mettyforically speaken) — get into pantyloons — when you de- sert your firesides, & with you heds full of wimin's rites noshuns go round like roarin lions, seekin whom you may devour some- boddy — in short, when you undertake to play the man, you play the devil and air an emphatic noosance. My female friends," I continued, as they were indignantly denartin, " wa well what A. Ward has sed ] " "^■^.■^^'..^M: .T-^ :*^K-.^' 'i^'^^?SlB--i :■• _i4 ^. 168 MA/^JiT TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR NOTHING TO WEAR. BY WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER. TVJILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER, born at Albany, N. Y., in 1825,13 best ^^ known by his poem of '• Nothing to Wear, ' ' which he published in 1857, and which attained at once the most extraordinary currency and celebrity. He was the author of other poems, and various humorous papers, which he threw ofif in such leisure as his profession of lawyer allowed him, butnone are comparable to t>.e satire which won him fame, and, with the exception of " Two Million:," would now hardly be remembered. He was a versatile and accompUshed man, whose advantages and opportunities had been great. if Miss Flora M'Flimsey, of Madison Square, Has made three separate journeys to Paris, And her father assures me, each time she was there, That she and her friend Mrs. Harris (Not the lady whose name is so famous in history, But plain Mrs. H., without romance or mystery) Spent six consecutive weeks, without stopping, In one continuous round of shopping — Shopping alone, and shopping together, At all hours of the day, and in all sorts of weather, For all manner of things that a woman can pnt On the crown of her head, or the sole of her foot, Or wrap round her shoulders, or fit round her waist, Or that can be sewed on, or pinned on, or laced, Or tied on with a string, or stitched on with a bow, In front or behind, above or below; For bonnets, mantillas, capes, collars and shawls; Dresses for breakfasts, and dinners, and balls; Dresses to sit in, and stand in, and walk in; Dresses to dance in, and flirt in, and talk in; Dresses in which to do nothing at all; Dresses for Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall; All of them different in color and shape, Silk, muslin and lace, velvet, satin and ciape, Brocade and broadcloth, and other material. Quite as expensive and much more ethereal ; In short, for all things that could ever be thought of. ji\ '*^ "" ...r^' t NOTHING TO WEAR. 169 Or milliner, modiste or tradesman be bought of, From ten-thousand-franc robes to twenty-sous frills; In all quarters of Paris, and to every store. While M'Flimsey in vain stormed, scolded and swore, They footed the streets, and he footed the bills! •1^ • FLORA M FLIMSEY. The last trip, their goods shipped by the steamer Araga Formed, M'Flimsey declares, the bulk of her cargo, Not to mention a quantity kept from the rest, Sufificient to fill the largest-sized Chest, Which did not appear on the ship's manifest. But for which the ladies themselves manifested Such particular interest, that they invested Their own proper persons in layers and rows 1 68 MARK TWAIN' S LIBRAE V OF HUMOR NOTHING TO WEAR. BY WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER. TV^ILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER, born at Albany, N. Y., in 1825, is best ^^ known by his poem of " Nothing to Wear," which he published in 1857, and which attained at once the most extraordinary currency and celebrity. He was the author of other poems, and various humorous papers, which he threw off in such leisure as his profession of lawyer allowed him, butnone are comparable to t\-.e satire which won him fame, and, with the exception of " Two Millionc," would now hardly be remembered. He was a versatile and accomplished man, whose advantages and opportunities had been great. Miss Flora M'Flimsey, of Madison Square, Has made three separate journeys to Paris, And her father assures me, each time she was there, That she and her friend Mrs. Harris (Not the lady whose name is so famous in history, But plain Mrs. H., without romance or mystery) Spent six consecutive weeks, without stopping, In one continuous round of shopping — Shopping alone, and shopping together, At all hours of the day, and in all sorts of weather, For all manner of things that a woman can pnt On the crown of her head, or the sole of her foot, Or wrap round her shoulders, or fit round her waist, Or that can be sewed on, or pinned on, or laced, Or tied on with a string, or stitched on with a bow. In front or behind, above or below; For bonnets, mantillas, capes, collars and shawls; Dresses for breakfasts, and dinners, and balls; Dresses to sit in, and stand in, and walk in; Dresses to dance in, and flirt in, and talk in; Dresses in which to do nothing at all; Dresses for Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall; All of them different in color and shape, Silk, muslin and lace, velvet, satin and ciape, Brocade and broadcloth, and other material, Quite as expensive and much more ethereal ; In short, for all things that could ever be thought of, NOTHING TO WEAR. 169 Or milliner, modiste or tradesman be bought of, From ten-thousand-franc robes to twenty-sous frills; In all quarters of Paris, and to every store, While M'Flimsey in vain stormed, scolded and swore, They footed the streets, and he footed the bills! FLORA M FLIMSEY. The last trip, their goods shipped by the steamer Arago Formed, M'Flimsey declares, the bulk of her cargo, Not to mention a quantity kept from the rest, Sufficient to fill the largest-sized Chest, Which did not appear on the ship's manifest. But for which the ladies themselves manifested Such particular interest, that they invested Their own proper persons in layers and rows IJL HARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Of muslins, embroideries, worked under-clothes. Gloves, handkerchiefs, scarfs, and such trifles as those; Then, wrapped in great shawls, like Circassian beauties, Gave good by to the ship, and go by to the duties. Her relations at home all marveled, no doubt. Miss Flora had grown so enormously stout For an actual belle and a possible bride; But the miracle ceased when she turned inside out, And the truth came to light, and the dry-goods beside. Which, in spite of Collector and Custom-House sentry, Had entered the port without any entry. SCOLDING IN VAIN. And yet, though scarce three months have passed since the day This merchandise went, on twelve carts, up Broadway, This same Miss M'Flimsey of Madison Square, The last time we met was in utter despair. Because she had nothing whatever to wear! Nothing to wear! Now, as this is a true ditty, I do not assert — this, you know, is between us — That she's in a state of absolute nudity. Like Powers' Greek Slave or the Medici Venus; .But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, NOTHING TO WEAR. I 7^ So I ventured again: " Wear your crimson brocade" ; (Second turn up of nose) — "That's too dark by a shade." "Your blue silk "—"That's too heavy." "Your pink" " That's too light." "Wear tulle over satin " — " I can't endure white." "Your rose-colored, then, the best of the batch" — "I haven't a thread of point-lace to match." "Your brown moire antique" — "Yes, and look like a Quaker" • " The pearl-colored "— " I would, but that plaguy dress-maker Has had it a week." " Then that exquisite lilac, In which you would melt the heart of a Shylock " ; (Here the nose took again the same elevation) — "I wouldn't wear that for the whole of creation." "Why not? It's my fancy, there's nothing could strike it As more comme ilfauf" — "Yes, but, dear me, that lean Sophronia Stuckup has got one just like it, And I won't appear dressed like a chit of sixteen." "Then that splendid purple, the sweet Mazarine; That superb point d' aiguille, that imperial green. That zephyr-like tarletan, that rich, grenadine" — "Not one of all which is fit to be seen," Said the lady, becoming excited and flushed. "Then wear," I exclaimed, in a tone which quite crushed Opposition, "that gorgeous toilette which you sported In Paris last spring, at the grand presentation, When you quite turned the head of the head of the nation, And by all the grand court were so very much courted." The end of the nose was portentously tipped up, And both the bright eyes shot forth indignation. As she burst upon me with the fierce exclamation, "I have worn it three times, at the least calculation, And that and most of my dresses are ripped up !" Here I ripped out something, perhaps rather rash. Quite innocent, though; but to use an expression More striking than classic, it " settled my hash," And proved very soon the last act of our session. " Fiddlesticks, is it, sir ? I wonder the ceiling Doesn't fall down and crush you — )^ou men have no feeling; You selfish, unnatural, illiberal creatures. Who set yourselves up as patterns and preachers, Your silly pretense — why, what a mere guess it is ? 174 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Pray, what do you know of a woman's necessities? I have told you and shown you I've nothing to wear, And it's perfectly plain you not only don't care, But you do not believe me " (here the nose went still higher). " I suppose, if you dared, you would call me a liar. Our engagement is ended, sir — yes, on the spot; You're a brute, and a monster, and — I don't know what." I mildly suggested the words Hottentot, Pickpocket, and cannibal, Tartar, and thief As gentle expletives which might give relief; But this only proved as a spark to the powder. And the storm I had raised came faster and louder; It blew and it rained, thundered, lightened and hailed Interjections, verbs, pronouns, till language quite failed To express the abusive, and then its arrears Were brought up all at once by a torrent of tears, And my last faint, despairing attempt at an obs- Ervation was lost in a tempest of sobs. Well, I felt for the lady, and felt for my hat, too, Improvised on the crown of the latter a tattoo. In lieu of expressing the feelings which lay Quite too deep for words, as Wordsworth would say; Then, without going through the form of a bow. Found myself in the entry — I hardly know how, On doorstep and sidewalk, past lamp-post and square, At home and up-stairs, in my own easy-chair; Poked my feet into slippers, my fire into blaze, And said to myself, as I lit my cigar, " Supposing a man had the wealth of the Czar Of the Russias to boot, for the rest of his days, On the whole, do you think he would have much to spare. If he married a woman with nothing to wear ?" Since that night, taking pains that it should not be bruited Abroad in society, I've instituted A course of inquiry, extensive and thorough. On this vital subject, and find, to my horror, That the fair Flora's case is by no means surprising But that there exists the greatest distress NOTHING TO WEAR, In our female community, solely arising From this unsupplied destitution of dress, Whose unfortunate victims are filling the air With the pitiful wail of -' Nothing to vvear." Researches in some of the " Upper Ten " districts Reveal the most painful and startling statistics, Of which let me mention only a few: In one single house on the Fifth Avenue, Three young ladies were found, all below twenty-two, Who have been three whole weeks without anything new In the way of flounced silks, and thus left in the lurch Are unable to go to ball, concert or church. In another large mansion near the same place, Was found a deplorable, heart-rending case Of entire destitution of Brussels point-lace. In a neighboring block there was found, in three calls, Total want, long continued, of camel's-hair shawls; And a suffering family, whose case exhibits The most pressing need of real ermine tippets; One deserving young lady almost unable To survive for the want of a new Russian sable; Still another, whose tortures have been most terrific Ever since the sad loss of tiie steamer Pacific, In which were ingulfed, not friend or relation (For whose fate she, perhaps, might have found consolation, Or borne it, at least, with serene resignation), But the choicest assortment of French sleeves and collars Ever sent out from Paris, worth thousands of dollars. And all as to style most recherche zxi6. rare, The want of which leaves her with nothing to wear. And renders her life so drear and dyspeptic That she's quite a recluse, and almost a sceptic, For she touchingly says, that this sort of grief Cannot find in Religion the slightest relief, And Philosophy has not a maxim to spare For the victims of such overwhelming despair. But the saddest, by far, of all these sad features Is the cruelty practiced upon the poor creatures By husbands and fathers, real Bluebeards and Timons, 175 J 76 MAA/^ TWAIN'S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR. Who resist the most touching appeals made for diamonds By their wives and their daughters, and leave them for days Unsupplied with new jewelry, fans or bouquets, Even laugh at their miseries whenever they have a chance, And deride their demands as useless extravagance; One case of a bride was brought to my view, Too sad for belief, but, alas ! 'twas too true. Whose husband refused, as savage as Charon, To permit her to take more than ten trunks to Sharon. The consequence was, that when she got there, At the end of three weeks she had nothing to wear; And when she proposed to finish the season At Newport, the monster refused, out and out, For his infamous conduct alleging no reason, Except that the waters were good for his gout; Such treatment as this was too shocking, of course, And proceedings are now gomg on for divorce. But why harrow the feelings by lifting the curtain From these scenes of woe ? Enough, it is certain, Has here been disclosed to stir up the pity Of every benevolent heart in the city, And spur up Humanity into a canter To rush and relieve these sad cases instanter. Won't somebody, moved by this touching description, Come forward to-morrow and head a subscription ? Won't some kind philanthropist, seeing that aid is So needed at once by these indigent ladies, Take charge of the matter ? Or won't Peter Cooper The corner-stone lay of some new splendid super- Structure, like that which to-day links his name In the Union unending of Honor and Fame, And found a new charity just for the care Of these unhappy women with nothing to wear. Which, in view of the cash which would daily be claimed, The Laying-out Hospital well might be named ? Won't Stewart, or some of our dry-goods importers, Take a contract for clothing our wives and our daughters ? Or, to furnish the cash to supply these distresses, And life's pathway strew with shawls, collars and dresses, NOTHING TO WEAR. Ere the want of them makes it much rougher and thornier, Won't some one discover a new California ? O ladies, dear ladies, the next sunny day, Please trundle your hoops just out of Broadway, From Its whirl and its bustle, its fashion and pride, And the temples of Trade which tower on each side, To the alleys and lanes, where Misfortune and Guilt Their children have gathered, their city have built; Where Hunger and Vice, like twin beasts of prey, Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt, Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt. Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, Half starved and half naked, lie crouched from the cold; See those skeleton limbs, those frost-bitten feet, A-ll bleeding and bruised by the stones of the street; Hear the sharp cry of childhood, the deep groans that swell From the poor dying creature who writhes on the floor* Hear the curses that sound like the echoes of Hell, As you sicken and shudder and fly from the door, Then home to your wardrobes, and say, if you dare — Spoiled children of fashion — you've nothing to wear ! And O, if perchance there should be a sphere Where all is made right which so puzzles us here, Where the glare and the glitter and tinsel of Time Fade and die in the light of that region sublime. Where the soul, disenchanted of flesh and of sense, Unscreened by its trappings and shows and pretence, Must be clothed for the life and the service above, With purity, truth, faith, meekness and love, O daughters of Earth ! foolish virgins, beware ! Lest in that upper realm you have nothing to wear ! 1857. 177 178 MARK TWA IN ' S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR. ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPERS. BY JOHN PHCENIX. A YEAR or two since a weekly paper was started in London, called the Illustrated Mews. It was filled with tolerably exe- cuted wood-cuts, representing scenes of popular interest, and though perhaps better calculated for the nursery than the reading-room, it took very well in England, where few can read, but all can understand pictures, and soon attained an immense circulation. As when the inimitable London Putich attained its world-wide celebrity, supported by such writers as Thackeray, Jerrold and Hood, would-be funny men on this side of the Atlantic attempted absurd imitations — the "Yankee Doodle," the "John Donkey," etc. — which, as a matter of course, proved miserable failures; so did the success of this Illustrated affair inspire our money-loving publishers with hopes of dollars, and soon appeared from Boston, New York and other places, Pictorial and Illustrated Newspapers, teeming with exe- crable and silly effusions, and filled with the most fearful wood- engravings, "got up regardless of expense," or anything else; the contemplation of which was enough to make an artist tear his hair and rend his garments. A Yankee named Gleason, of Boston, published the first, we believe, calling it " Gleason' s Pic- torial (it should have been Gleason's Pickpocket) and Drawing- Room Companion." In this he presented to his unhappy sub- scribers, views of his house in the country, and his garden, and, for aught we know, of '' his ox and his ass, and the stranger within his gates." A detestable invention for transferring Daguer- reotypes to plates for engraving, having come into notice about this time, was eagerly seized upon by Gleason for farther embel- lishing his catchpenny publication, duplicates and uncalled-for pictures were easily obtained, and many a man has gazed in horror-stricken astonishment on the likeness of a respected friend, as a " Portrait of Monroe Edwards," or that of his deceased grandmother, in the character of " One of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence." They love pictures in Yankeedom; every tin peddler has one on his wagon, and an itin- ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPERS. 179 erant lecturer can always obtain an audience by sticking up a likeness of some unhappy female, with her ribs laid open in an impossible manner, for public inspection, or a hairless gentleman with the surface of his head laid out in eligible lots, duly marked and numbered. The factory girls of Lowell, the professors of Harvard, all bought the Pictorial. (Professor Webster was read- ing one when Dr. Parkman called on him on the morning of the murder.) Gleason's speculation was crowned with success, and he bought himself a new cooking-stove and erected an out-build- ing on his estate, with both of which he favored the public in a^ new wood-cut immediately. {. Inspired by his success, old Feejee-Mermaid-Tom-Thumb- Woolly-Horse-Joyce-Heth-Barnum forthwith got out another Illustrated Weekly, with pictures far more extensive, letter-press still sillier, and engravings more miserable, if possible, than Yan- kee Gleason's. And then we were bored and buffeted by having incredible likenesses of Santa Anna, Queen Victoria and poor old Webster thrust beneath our nose, to that degree that we wished the respected originals had never existed, or that the art of wood-engraving had perished with that of painting on glass. It was, therefore, with the most intense delight that we saw a notice the other day of the failure and stoppage of Baminn's Illustrated News; we rejoiced thereat greatly, and we hope that it will never be revived, and that Gleason will also fail as soon as he conveniently can, and that his trashy Pictorial will perish with it. It must not be supposed from the tenor of these remarks that we are opposed to the publication of a properly conducted and creditably executed Illustrated paper. " On the contrary, quite the reverse." We are passionately fond of art ourselves, and we believe that nothing can have a stronger tendency to refine- ment in society, than presenting to the public chaste and elabo- rate engravings, copies of works of high artistic merit, accompa- nied by graphic and well-written essays. It was for the purpose of introducing a paper containing these features to our appre- ciative community, that we have made these introductory re- marks, and for the purpose of challenging comparison, and defying competition, that we have criticised so severely the imbe- cile and ephemeral productions mentioned above. At a vast expenditure of money, time and labor, and after the most incred- ible and unheard-of exertion on our part, individually, we are at i8o MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAE V OF HUMOR. length able to present to the public an Illustrated publication of unprecedented merit, containing engravings of exceeding costli- ness and rare beauty of design, got up on an expensive scale, which never has been attempted before, in this or any other country. • We furnish our readers this week with the first number, merely premising that the immense expense attending its issue will require a corresponding liberality of patronage on the part of the public, to cause it to be continued. And Second Storj Front Room Companioa^ VoLI] San Keg-o, October 1,1853. [No. I. Portrait of His Royal Highness Prince Albert. — Prince Albert, the son of a gentleman named Coburg, is the husband of Queen Victoria of England, and the father of many of her children. He is the inventor of the celebrated -'Albert hat," which has been lately introduced with great effect in the U. S. Army. The Prince is of German extraction, his father being a Dutchman and his mother a Duchess. V///.'////////£ ioa le* OH till Mansion of John Phoenix, Esq., San Diego, California. ILLUSTRA TED NE WSPAPERS. I8l House in which Shakespeare was born, in Stratford-on-Avon. Abbotsford, the residence of Sir Walter Scott, author of Byron's Pilgrim's Progress, etc. The Capitol at Washington. Residence of Governor Bigler, at Benicia, California. Battle of Lake Erie [see remarks, p. 96), l82 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. [p. 96.] The Battle of Lake Erie, of which our Artist presents a spirited engraving, copied from the original painting, by Hannibal Car- racci, in the possession of J. P. Haven, Esq., was fought in 1836, on Chesapeake Bay, between the U. S. frigates Constitu- tion and Guerriere and the British troops under General Put- nam. Our glorious flag, there as everywhere, was victorious, and " Long may it wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the slaved Fearful accident on the Camden & Amboy Railroad ! ! Ter- rible loss of life ! ! ! View of the City of San Diego, by Sir Benjamin West. Interview between Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Duchess of Sutherland, from a group of Statuary, by Clarke Mills. ILL USTRA TED NE WSPAPERS. 183 ym tr Bank Account of J. Phoenix, Esq., at Adams & Co., Bankers, San Francisco, California. Gas Works, San Diego Herald Office. Steamer Goliah. View of a California Ranch — Landseer. • !K>;vi^., d. Me., and his "Letters," which wer<:nainly political satires, were firct printed there. He wrote several other boo , which are now little known : '• Way Down East," " My Thirty Years Out othe Senate," and " Dew Drops of the Nineteenth Century." Ix the fall of the year 1829 I took: into my head I'd go to Portland. I had heard a good deal alut Portland, what a fine place it was, and how the folks got ricl there proper fast ; and that fall there was a couple of new pa] ■> come up to Downing- ville from there, called the Portland C' vimmin, Und you catches dem efery one : " — So sang dis wasser maiden Vot hadn't got nodings on. << Dere ish drunks all full mit money In ships dat vent down of old; Und you helpsh yourself, by dunder ! To shimmerin crowns of gold. "Shoost look at dese shpoons und vatches ! Shcost see dese diamant rings ! Coom down und full your bockets, Und I'll giss you like avery dings. '• Vot you vantsh mit your schnapps und lager ? Coom down into der Rhine ! Der ish pottles der Kaiser Charlemagne Vonce filled mit gold -red wine !" Dat fetched him — he shtood all shpell pound; She pooled his coat-tails down, She drawed him oonder der wasser, De maiden mit nodings on. 205 The quickest way to take the starch out ov a man who iz all- wuss blameing himself, iz to agree with him. This aint what he iz looking for. Josh Billings 'O 206 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE EXPENSIVE TREAT OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. BY RICHARD MALCOMB JOHNSTON. JDICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON, born in Hancock County, Ga., March V S, 1822, has a hterary reputation of many years, origuiating with the " Dukesborough Tales," and identified with several characteristic works of humor, fancy and imagination. Besides an incipient ventriloquist who had included it in a limited provincial tour which he was making, in some hope of larger development of his artistic powers, the only show that had visited Dukesborough thus far was the wax figures. The recol- lection of that had ever remained unsatisfactory. I can just remember that one of the figures was William Pitt, and another the Sleeping Beauty; that the former was the saddest and the yel- lowest great statesman that I had had opportunity, thus far, to look upon, and the latter — well, it is not pleasant, even now, to recall how dead, how longtime dead, she appeared. When Aggy, my nurse, seeing me appalled at the sight, repeatedly asseverated, " De lady is jes a-tired anda-takin' of a nap," I cried the louder, and plucked so at Aggy that she had to take me away. Though not thus demonstrative, yet even elderly country people acknowl- edged to disappointment, and there was a general complaint that if what had been was the best that could be done by Dukes- borough in the way of public entertainment, it might as well take itself away from the great highway of human travel, suspend its school, sell out its two stores at cost, abolish its tavern and post- ofifice, tear down its blacksmith's and shoe shops, and, leaving only its meeting-house, resolve itself into the elements from which it had been aggregated. Not that these were the very words: but surely their full equivalents were employed when William Pitt, the Sleeping Beauty, and their pale associates had silently left the town. As for a circus, such an institution was not known, except by hearsay, even to Colonel Moses Grice, of the Fourteenth Re^i- ment Georgia Militia, though he was a man thirty-five years old, over six feet_high, of proportional weight, owned a good planta- tion and at least twenty negroes, and had seen the theatre as EXPENSIVE TEE A T OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. 207 many as three times in the city of Augusta. The ideas the Colonel had received there were such, he said, as would last him to the end of his days — a period believed to be remote, barring, of course, all contingencies of future wars. To this theatrical experience he had been desirous, for some time, to add that of the circus, assured in his mind that from what he had heard, it was a good thing. It happened once, while on a visit to Augusta — whither he had accompanied a wagon-load of his cotton, partly on that business, but mainly to see the great world there — that he met at Collier's tavern, where he sojourned, a circus forerunner, who was going the rounds with his advertisements. Getting soon upon terms of inilmacy with one who seemed to him the most agreeable, entertaining and intelligent gentleman that he had ever met. Colonel Grice imparted to him such information about Dukesborough that, although that village was not upon the list of appointments — Dukesborough, in point of fact (to his shame the agent confessed it) not having been even heard of — yet a day was set for its visitation, and, when visited, another Vv^as set for the appearance there of the Great World-Renowed Circus, which claimed for its native homes London, Paris and New York, It would be entertaining to a survivor of that period to make even small boys, from families of most limited means in this generation, comprehend the interest excited by those advertise- ments, in huge black and red letters, that were tacked upon the wall of Spouter's tavern. From across Beaver Dam, Rocky Creek, the Ogeechee, from even the head-waters of streams lead- ing to the Oconee, they came to read over and spell over the mighty words. Colonel Grice, who had been found, upon his own frank admission, to be the main mover, was forced to answer all inquiries concerning its magnitude, its possible influences upon the future of Dukesborough, and kindred subjects. There would have be^n a slight drawback to the general eager expec- tation on grounds moral and religious; but the World-Renowned liad anticipated and provided against that, as will hereafter appear. Then Colonel Grice had signified his intention of meet- ing the impending institution on the occasion of at least two of its exhibitions before its arrival, and should take it upon himself to warn it of the kind of people it was coming among. The Colonel resided five miles south of the village. He had a wife, but no child (a point on which he was, perhaps, a little 2CS MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. sore), was not in debt, was hospitable, an encourager, especially in words, of public and private enterprises, and enthusiastically devoted, though without experience in wars, to the military pro- fession, which — if he might use the expression — he would call his second wife. Off the muster-field he habitually practiced that affability which is pleasant because so rare to see in the warrior class. When in full uniform and at the head of the regiment, with girt sword and pistol-holster, he did indeed look like a man not to be fooled with; and the sound of his voice in utterance of military orders was such as to show that he intended those orders to be heard and obeyed. When the regiment was disbanded, the sternness would depart from his mien, and, though yet unstripped of weapons and regalia, he would smile blandly, as if to reassure spectators that, for the present, the danger was over, and friends might approach without apprehension. The Colonel met the circus even farther away than he at first had intended. He had determined to study it, he said, and he traveled some seventy miles on horseback, attending daily and nightly exhibitions. Several times during this travel, and after- wards, on the forenoon of the great day in Dukesborough, he was heard to say that, if he were limited to one word with which to describe what he had seen, that word would be — graiideur. "As for what sort of a people them circus people are," he said, " in a moral and in a religious sense, now — ahem ! you know, gentlemen and ladies, especially ladies — ah, ha! I'm not a mem- ber, but I'm as great a respecter of religion as can be found in the whole State of Georgia. Bein' raised to that, I pride myself on that. Now, these circus people, they ain't what I should call a highly moral, that is, they ain't a strictly religions ^^o^\^. You see, gentlemen, that ain't, not religion ain't, so to speak, their business. They ain't goin' about preachin', and havin' camp- meetin' revivals, and givin' singin' -school lessons. They are — I wish I could explain myself about these circus people. These circus people are a-tryin' — you know, gentlemen, different peo- ple makes their livin' in different ways; and these circus people are jes a-tryin' to do exactly the same thing in jes exactly the same way. Well, gentlemen, grandeur is the word I should say about their performances. I should not confine myself to the word religioji. Strictly speakin', that word do not embrace all the warious warieties, so to speak, of a circus. My word would EXPENSIVE TREAT OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. 20g be grandeur; and I think that's the word you all will use when that tent is up, that door is open, and you are rushin' into its — its — I don't know whether to use the word jcnvs or departments. But, for the sake of decency, I'll say — depart limits. As for moral and religious, gentlemen — and 'specially ladies — I tell you, it ain't neither a camp-meetin', a'sociation, a quarterly meetin',nor a singin'-school. I'm not a member, but I'm a respecter; and as to all that, and all them, Dukesborough may go farther and fare worse. That's all I got to say." On the day before. Colonel Grice, by this time grown intimate with the manager, and as fond of him as if he had been his own brother (some said even fonder), in the fullness of his heart had invited the whole force to breakfast with him on the way to Dukesborough, and the invitation had been accepted. What was consumed was enormous; but he could afford it, and his v/ife, especially with distinguished visitors, was as hospitable and open- hearted as himself. Other persons besides boys believed in their hearts that they might not have been able to endure another day's delay of the show. For a brief period the anxiety of the school-children amounted to anguish when the master expressed doubts as to a holi- day; for holidays then were infrequent,and schoolmasters had to be over-persuaded. But the present incumbent yielded early, with becoming reluctance, to what seemed to be the general desire. The eagerly expected morning came at last. Many who knew that the circus was lingering at Colonel Grice's went forth to meet it, some on foot, some on horseback. Some started even in gigs and other carriages, but, being warned by old people, turned, unhooked their horses, and hitched them to swinging limbs in the very farthest part of the graveyard grove, and then set out on foot. The great show had put foremost its best wagon, but nobody had any sort of idea what things those were which the military gentlemen who rode in it carried in their hands. One person, known generally to carry a cool head, said that one of these things looked to him like a drum, though of a size com- paratively enormous, but the idea was generally scorned. "Where yougoin', there, Polly Ann ?" said Mrs. Watts to her little daughter, who was opening the gate. " My Lord!" exclaimed the mother instantly afterwards, as the band struck up. Then she rushed out herself and ran over Polly Ann, knocking her 2 I O MARK TWAIN ' S LIB J? A/? Y OF HUMOR. down. Polly Ann got up again and followed. "Stay behind there, you, Jack, and you, Susan! You want to git eat up by them camels and varmints ? I never see sich children for cur'- osity. They've got as much cur'osity as — as — " "As we have," said Mrs. Thompson, laughing, as she attempted in vain to drive back her own little brood. The effect of the music in the long, covered wagon, drawn by six gray horses slowly before the long procession, no words can describe. It put all, the aged and the young, into a tremor. , Old Mr. Leadbetter, one of the deacons, who had been very " juboLis," as he said, about the whole thing, was trying to read a chapter somewhere in Romans, when, at the very first blast, his spectacles jumped off his nose, and he told a few of the brethren afterwards, confidentially, that he never could recollect afterwards, where he had left off. As for Mrs. Bland, she actually danced in her piazza for, probably, as many as a dozen bars, and, when "had up " about it, pleaded in abatement, that she did it entirely unbeknownst to herself, and that she couldn't haveholp it if it had been to have saved her life. It might have gone hard with the defendant had not some of her triers been known to march in time to the band, and besides, they had staid after the close of the ani- mal show, contrary to the special inhibition against the circus. For the World-Renowned had provided against the scruples of the straitest sects by attaching to itself a small menagerie of animals, whose exhibition had been appointed for the opening. There were a camel, a lion, a zebra, a hyena, two leopards, a porcupine, six monkeys, a bald eagle and some parrots. By some means, never fully known, the most scrupulous of the spec- tators had gotten (late during this first act) to the very loftiest and remotest seats in the amphitheatre, and when the animals were shut from the view, these persons, though anxious, were unable to retire without stepping over the shoulders of those beneath— a thing that no decent person could be expected to do. So Mrs. Bland got off with a mild rebuke. As the cavalcade proceeded, it was a sight to see those who came in late in vehicles hastily turning in, apprehensive of the effect upon their horses of the music and the smell of the wild animals. For the first and only time in the history of Dukes- borough, there was momentary danger of a blockade of wheels in its one street. EXPENSIVE TREAT OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. 2I I " A leetle more," said old Tony to the other negroes at home that night — he was the driver of the Booker carriage — '* a leetle more, and I'd a driv' right into the camel's mouth," For some reason, possibly its vast size and the peculiar dip of its under-lip in the pictures, the camel seemed to be reo-arded as the most carnivorous of the wild beasts, and especially fond of human flesh. The place selected for the tent was the area west of Sweep's shoe-shop, at the foot of the hill on which the Basil mansion stood. When the door was opened at last, the crowd surged in. Colonel Grice waited long, in order to see that no one of any con- dition was excluded for want of the entrance-fee. For at last this was regarded by him rather as a treat of his own to his neighbors, and he wanted it to be complete. Then he walked in with the deliberateness of an owner of the establishment, and contemplated everything with benignant complaisance. Those ladies and gentlemen who were within the sound of his voice, as he went the rounds of the boxes containing the animals, were for- tunate. " Be keerful there, boys — be keerful," he said, kindly but seri- ously, to some little fellows who were leaning against the rope and studying the porcupine. '• Be keerful. That's the cilibrated pockapine. You see them sharp things on him ? Well, them's his quills, and which, when he's mad, he shoots 'em like a bow- 'narrow, and they goes clean through people." The boys backed, although the little creature looked as if his quiver had been well nigh exhausted in previous wars. '■ That's the hyner." said the Colonel, moving on, " and they say he's the most rhinocerous varmint of 'em all. Of all victuals, he loves folks the best, though he some rather that somebody or something else would kill 'em, and then him come on about a week or sich a matter afterwards. They scratches up graveyards, and in the countries where they raise, people has to bury their kin-folks in stone coffins." "Oh, goodness gracious, Colonel! Let's go on!" This exclamation was made by Miss Angelina Spouter, the thinnest of the party, who was locked arm in arm with Miss Georgiana Pea, the thickest. '•'No danger, Miss Angeline— no danger at a!!," answered the Colonel, briskly raising his arm aloft that all might see what was 212 MARK TWAIN ' .9 LIBRAR V OF HUMOR. between them and the beast, at which he looked as if it were his own pet hyena and would not think of leaving its lair without his order. " No danger whatsomever. Even if he could git out, he'd have to ride over me, and, besides, it's mostly corpses that he'd be arfter, and — ah — I don't think, anyway, that yoiid be in the slightest danger." As he said this, the Colonel looked rather argumentatively, and at Miss Pea more than Miss Spouter. "Oh," said Miss Pea, gayly, " if the creetur could get out, and then took a notion for live folks, I'd be the one he'd make for, certain sure." The hyena, though ugly and ferocious, did not look at his spectators once, but continued pacing up and down in his narrow cage, at either end of which, when reaching it, he thrust his snout against the roof, as if his thoughts were tending upwards rather than downwards. I have never forgotten how unhappy seemed that poor beast. To all the other animals there was some relief of captivity in their various degrees of domestication and affilia- tion with man. The lion evidently loved his keeper; even the leopards seemed rather fond of him. But the hyena, more nar- rowly caged than all, conquered, not subdued, wholly untamed, constantly rolling his fiery gray eyes, appeared to have his thoughts ever upon revenge and escape to his native wilds. I, a young child, could not but pity him; and it occurred to me then that if ever he should become free, and then be tempted, at least, to an appetizer of living human flesh before reaching the grave- yard, he most likely would fasten upon the manager of the Great World-renowned. Just as the party was about to pass on, the wretched beast, stopping for a moment, his snout pressed to the roof, uttered several short, loud, hoarse, terrific howls. Miss Spouter screamed. Miss Pea laughed hysterically, and Colonel Grice, before he knew it, was on the outside of his knot of followers. Recover- ing himself— for he was without his sword and pistol-holster — he stepped quickly back to the front, looked threateningly, and afterwards disdainfully, at the hyena, who had resumed his walks, and said: "You rhinoceros varmint, you! Thinkin' of them graveyards you've robbed, and hungry for some more of 'em, ah! These is live folks, my boy; and they ain't quite ready for you yit, nor EXPENSIVE TREAT OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. 2 I -> won't be for sometime, I hope." Then he led on to the monkeys. " Hello, Bill! I knowed you'd be here; got your boys with you, too, I see." The person addressed by Colonel Grice was a tall, stout young farmer. Over his other clothes he wore a loosely fitting round jacket, of thick, home-made stuff, with capacious pockets. In each of these were one foot and a considerable portion of a leg of a child about two years old. Their other feet rested easily in the man's hands, which were tucked up for that purpose, while one arm of each was around his neck. The children were exactly alike, except a shade's difference in the color of their eyes. This was Mr. Bill Williams, who, three years before, had been mar- ried to Miss Caroline Thigpen. At this double birth, Mr. Williams was proud, and even exultant. Out of the many names suggested for the twins, he early selected those of the renowned offspring of Mars and Rhea Sylvia. Modifying them, however, somewhat for his own reasons, he called and so wrote them in his Bible, "Romerlus" and Remerlus." ^'- Remus, Mr. Bill," urged the friend who had suggested the names. "Remus, not Remulus: Romulus and Remus are the names." '•No, Philip," he answered; "its Romerlus and Remerlus. One's jest as old as t'other, or nigh and about; and he's as big, and he's as good-lookin', and his brother's name sha'n't be no big- ger'n his'n." As soon as they were able to stand without harm, he accus- tomed them to this mode of travel, and he was never so contented as when he and they went out thus together. " I knowed you'd be here. Bill, and your boys." " Yes Kurnel, I thought comin' to see the beastesses and var- mints might sort o' be a start to 'em in jography. You Rom.— you Reme, you needn't squeeze me so tight. They ain't no dan- ger in them things." The children, plucky for their age, and with considerable experience in travel, had gone easily enough thus far; but when they looked upon these creatures, so like, yet so unlike, mankind, they shrank from the view, and clung closely to their father. Colonel Grice, recovered from the embarrassment occasioned by the hyena, was pleased at the apprehension of the twins. " Natchel, Bill, perfec'ly natchel. You know some folks says 214 MARA TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. monkeys is kin to us, and the boys, mebbe, don't like the looks of their relations." " They ain't no kin o' mine, Kurnel, nor theirn," answered Mr. Bill. " Ef you think they're humans, supposin' you — as you hain't no children of your own — supposin' you adopt one of 'em ?" Mr. Bill suspected that the Colonel might be alluding to the fabled she-wolf. The Colonel, however, had never heard of the distinguished originals of Roman story. His remark was a mere jeu iVesprit, springing naturally from the numerous sources of satisfaction of the occasion. The wild beasts were finally hidden from view, and ail repaired to their seats. Colonel Grice sat high, and near the entrance of the rear tent from which the circus performers were to emerge. Mr. Williams sat on the lowest tier, near the main entrance. He had taken his boys out of his pockets and held them on his knees. The Colonel, when he could get an opportunity, quietly, and in a very pleasant way, called the ring-master's attention to him, who smiled and nodded. Then the curtain was pushed aside from the rear tent, the band struck up, and the piebald horses came marching in with their silent riders, who, at first, looked as if they had just come from the bath, and had had time for only a limited toilet. Old Miss Sally Cash, cousin and close neighbor of Colonel Grice, exclaimed, " Lor'-a-mercy, Mose! Them ain't folks, is they? Them's wax figgers, ain't they?" "I assure you, cousin Sally, that they're folks," answered the Colonel, with marked candor. He had great respect for his cou- sin Sally, and some awe. " I thought they was wax figgers, sot on springs. They ain't like no folks that I've ever saw, and I've saw a good many peo- ple in my time, both here and in Agusty." It was one of Miss Cash's boasts, which few country women of that generation could make, that she had once been to that famous city. After a short interval, she added: "I b'lieve yit they're wax figgers." At that moment the clown, all spotted and streaked, bringing up the rear, shouted, " Here we all are, my masters." " My Lord-a'mighty!" exclaimed Miss Cash and some three hundred other females. Only Colonel Grice, and a very few others, who had been at yesterday's exhibition, could preserve any EXPENSIVE TREAT OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. 2 I C amount of coolness. The rest abandoned themselves to unlim- ited wonder. " I'm sixty-nine year old," said old Mr. Pate, " and I never see sich as that before, and I never 'spected to see sich as that." As they made their involutions and evolutions, destined appar- ently to be endless in number and variety, the old man looked on as if in his age he was vouchsafed the witness of the very last and highest achievement of human endeavor. " Do you think that's decent, Mose ?" asked Miss Cash. The performers were then in the act of the "ground and lofty tum- bling," turning somersaults forward, backward, over one another, lying on their backs, throwing up their legs, and springing to their feet, etc., until they were panting and blue in the face. Miss Cash was not disposed that her cousin Mose should know how much she was interested in this performance. "I shouldn't say it was (?//decent, cousin Sally." "I don't say it is," said Miss Cash. " You know," said the Colonel, winking slyly to his wife, and other friends of both sexes, " nobody is obleeged to stay and see the show. Anybody can go that wants to. They ain't no law ag'in goin', if anybody's desires is to git away." "No," answered Miss Cash, downright. " I've paid my half a dollar, and they sha'n't cheat me out of it, nor nary part of it." The next scene was one which Colonel Grice had eagerly antici- pated. A steed rushed into the ring. He was as wild, appar- ently, as Mazeppa's, and the clown, when the ring-master inquired for the rider, answered, in a pitiful tone, that he was sick, and none other of the troupe would dare to take his place. Then followed the usual fun of the master ordering the clown to ride the horse, and the clown after vain remonstrance, trying to catch the horse, and the horse refusing to be caught; and, finally, the giving up the chase, and the master lashing the recusant beast around the ring, and wishing in vain for a rider to set him off properly. In the midst of this, an extremely drunken young man, homely clad, came through the main entrance, after a dis- pute and a scuffle with the door-keeper, and, staggering to where Mr. Bill Williams sat, looked down upon him " Two babies. One {Jiic) yours, s'pose." "Yes," said Mr. Bill. " And {Jiic) t'other—" 2 i6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " My wife's ; but that ain't nobody's business but ourn. You pass on." The stranger declined, and fixing his muddled attention on what was going on in the ring, said : " I can (Jdc) ride that horse — " The words were no sooner uttered than the man stumbled upon the track, just after the horse had dashed past. The whole audience, except Colonel Grice and the select few, rose and cried out in horror. '•'Take him out, Bill ! Take him out I" cried Colonel Grice. Indeed, Mr. Eill had already slid his babies into his wife's lap, and was dragging the man out of the ring. He insisted upon returning. " Look a-here, my friend," said Mr. Bill, "I don't know you, nor nobody else don't seem to know you ; but if I didn't have Rom and Reme — " The fellow made another rush. Mr. Bill took hold of him, but, receiving a trip, he fell flat, and the stranger fell into the ring, rolling out of the track in lucky time. The ring-master seemed m.uch embarrassed. " Oh, give him a little ride, captain ! " cried out Colonel Grice. " If he falls, he's too drunk to git badly hurt." " It's a shame, Mose ! " remonstrated Miss Cash. " I did't come here and pay my money to see people killed. Notwith- standin' and never o'-the-less the poor creeter's drunk, and not hardly fitten to live, he ought by good rights to have some time to prepar" for the awful change that — " But by this time Mazeppa was mounted and dashing away ; and but that Miss Cash had made up her mind not to be cheated out of any portion of her money, she would have shut her eyes, or veiled her face, as the maddened animal sped along, while the infatuated inebriate clung to his mane. An anxious time it was. Kind-hearted people were sorry they had come. In the struggle between life and death, the stranger seemed to be begin- ning to sober. Sooner than could have been expected, he raised himself from the horse's neck (Miss Cash twisting her mouth and screwing her neck as he reeled back and forth from side to side), gathered up the reins, shook from his feet the thick shoes he was clad with, flung aside his old hat, brushed up his curly hair, and, before Miss Cash could utter a word, was on his EXPENSIVE TREAT OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. 217 feet. Then began that prolonged metamorphosis which old Mr, Pate was never satisfied with recounting, whether to those who saw it or those who saw it not. " Coat after coat, breeches after breeches, gallis after gallis, shirt after shirt, ontwell he shucked hisself nigh as clean as a ear o' corn." When everybody saw that the stranger was one of the show- men, tTie fun rose to a height that delayed for full five minutes the next scene. As for Colonel Grice, his handkerchief was positively wet with the tears he had shed. Even Mr. Bill for- got his own discomfiture in the universal glee. "It's a shame, Mose," said Miss Cash, "to put such a trick on Bill Williams, and that right where his wife is. It would be a good thing if he could put it back on you." Even at this late day, a survivor of that period can scarcely recall without some exaltation of feeling that young girl of eleven (who had been advertised as " Mademoiselle Louise, the Most Celebrated Equestrienne in the world "), as she ran out with the daintiest of frocks, the pinkest of stockings, the goldenest of flounces, the bluest of belts, the curliest of hair, the peachiest of cheeks, kissed her hand to the audience, put one foot into the clown's hand, and flew into the saddle. As she went around, dancing upon that horse in full gallop, hopping over her whip and jumping through rings, and, when seated, smoothed down her skirt and waved her sleeveless arms — well, there was one boy (his name was Seaborn Byne) that declared he " would be dinged if it wasn't enough to melt the hearts clean outen a statchit." Other boys cordially endorsed this speech. As for Jack Watts, just turned of his tenth year, with the example before him of his older brother Tommy (dead in love at thir- teen and some upwards, with Miss Wilkins the schoolmistress), he ran away from home the next morning, and followed for three miles the circus, begging to be taken into its employ, stipulating for only board and clothes. When caught, brought back, and properly attended to by his mother, the villain was suspected, and almost as good as confessed, that his purpose was to avail himself of an opportunity to seize upon the person of Mademoi- selle Louise and her imagined vast treasures, and bear them to some distant foreign shore — on which one in special, in his exigent haste, he had not yet been able fully to determine. 2 1 8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. In the interval before the last, named " The Wonderful Tooth- drawing Coffee-pot Fire-cracker Scene," an incident occurred that was not on the programme— an interlude, as it were, impro- vised by the exuberant spirits of both spectators and showmen. Colonel Grice, deeply gratified at the success of what, without o-reat stretch, might be called his own treat, was in the mood to receive special attention and compliment from any source. When the pretended inebriate had been lifted upon Mazeppa, the clown took a bottle from his pocket, tasted it when he had gotten behind his master, smacked his lips, set it down by the middle pole, and, being detected in one of his resortings to it, was reproached for not inviting some one to drink with him. They were on the portion of the ring next the main entrance. <' Why don't you invite Colonel Grice ?" said j\Ir. Bill \Villiams, in a low voice. " He expects it." The master turned to notice from whom the suggestion pro- ceeded, and, before he could determine, the clown, though with some hesitation, said, "If Colonel Grice—" "■ Stop it ! " whispered the master. But it was too late. The Colonel had already risen, and was carefully descending. ''Is you goin' there, Mose, shore enough ? " said Miss Cash. *' It do look like Mose is complete carried away with them circus people and hisself." Having gotten safely over the intervening heads and shoulders, the Colonel stepped with dignity into the ring, at the same time feeling somewhat of the embarrassment which will sometimes befall the very greatest warrior Vv-hen, without his weapons, he knows himself to be the object of the attention of a large num- ber of civilians, both male and female. This embarrassment hindered his observation of the captain's winks, and the clown's pouring a portion of the liquor upon the ground. He walked up rapidly and extended his hand. The clown, with an effort at mirthfulness, the more eager because he was doubtful of perfect success, withdrew the bottle from his grasp, spread out his legs, squatted his body, and, applying the thumb of his disengaged hand to his nose, wriggled his fingers at the Colonel's face, wink- ing frantically the while, hoping the latter would advance the joke by insistence. EXPENSIVE TREA T OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. 219 In this he miscalculated. Persons who claimed to have seen Colonel Moses Grice, on previous occasions, what was called viad, said that all these were childish fretfulness compared with his present condition of mind, when, after the withdrawal of the bottle, the whole audience. Miss Cash louder than all, broke into uproarious laughter. Fortunately the enraged chieftain had nor sword, nor pistol, nor even walking-cane. His only weapon was his tongue. Stepping back a pace or two, and glaring upon the ludicrous squatter, he shouted: " You spotted-backed, striped-legged, streaked-faced, speckled- b-breasted, p'inted-hatted son-of-a-gun ! " AVith each ejaculation of these successive, uncommon appella- tions, the poor clown lifted himself somewhat, and by the time their climax was reached was upright, and, dressed as he was, seemed most pitiful. "jMy dear Colonel Grice — " he began. "Shet up your old red mouth," broke in the Colonel. -'I didn't want your whisky. I got better whisky at home than you know anything about. But as you asked me to drink, like, as I thought, one gentleman would ask another gentleman, I didn't feel like refusin' you. I give the whole of you your breakfast, your blasted varmints and all ; I put at least twenty into your cussed old show, and after that — " " My dear-est Colonel Grice ! " "Oh, you p'inted-hatted, streaked - fac-ed, speckled-b- breasted — " beginning, as it were, a back-handed stroke by reversing the order of his epithets. At this moment the ring-master, who had not been able thus far to get in a single word, said in a loud but calm tone : " Colonel Grice, don't you see that it was a mere jest, and that the suggestion came from one of your neighbors ? The bot- tle contains nothing but water. We beg your pardon if you are offended ; but I can but think that the abusive words you have used already are quite enough." " Come, Mose ! come ! " cried Miss Cash, who had just been able to stop her laughter. " Give and take, Mose. You put it onto Bill Williams, and he stood it ; and he put it back onto you, and now you can't stand it, eh ? " And the old lady again fairly screamed with laughter, while hundreds of others joined. The Colonel stood for a moment, hesitating. Then he sud- COLONEL GRICE GETS MA1>. 220 EXPENSIVE TREAT OF COLONEL MOSES GRICE. 221 denly turned, and, remarking that this was no place for a gentle- man, walked towards the entrance. " You goin' to let 'em cheat you out of the balance of your money that way, Mose ? " asked Miss Cash. He turned again. Finding himself wholly without support, and unwilling to loose the great scene of the *' Tooth-drawing," etc., he halted and stood until it was over. By that time he was considerably mollified, and the manager, approaching, apologized for himself, the clown, and all his troupe^ and begged that he would join in a glass of the genuine at Spouter's tavern. How could the Colonel refuse? He could not, and he did not. "Go with us, won't you, sir? " said the manager, addressing Mr. Williams. "We had some little fun at your expense also ; but I hope you bear us no malice, as we never intend to hurt feelings." " Sperrits," answered Mr. Bill, " is a thing I seldom teches— that is, I don't tech it reglar ; but I'll try a squirrel-load with you — jes a moderate size squirrel-load." At Spouter's all was cordially made up. Mr. Bill set Rom and Reme on the counter, and the clown gave them a big lump of white sugar apiece. '•'They seem to be nice, peaceable little fellows," said he. " Do they ever dispute ? " " Oh, not a great deal," answered Mr. Bill. " Sometimes Rom — that's the bluest-eyed one — he wants to have all his feed before Reme gits any o' his'n, and he claws at the spoon, and Reme's nose. But when he does that, I jes set him right down, I does, and I makes him wait ontwell Reme's fed. I tends to raise 'em to be peaceable, and to give and take, and to be friends as well as brothers, which is mighty far from bein' always the case in families." Mr. Bill knew that Colonel Grice and his younger brother Abram had not spoken together for years. "Right, Bill," said the Colonel. "Raise 'em right. Take keer o' them boys. Bill. Two at a time comes right hard on a fellow, though, don't it. Bill ? Expensive, eh ? " and the Colonel winked pleasantly all around. " Thank ye, Kurnel ; Til do the best I can. I shall raise em to give and take. No, Kurnel, not so very hard. Fact, I wa'n't a-expectin' but one, yit, when Reme come, I thought jest as much o' him as I did o' Rom. No, Kurnel, it wouldn't be my 22 2 MAEK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. desires to be a married man and have nary ar — to leave what little prop'ty I got to. And now, sence I got two instid o' one, and them o' the same size, I feel l-.ke I'd be sort o' awk'ard 'ithout both ot 'em. You see, Kurnel, they balances agin one another in my pockets. No, Kurnel, better two than nary one ; and in that way you can larn 'em better to give and take. Come, Rom, come, Reme— git in ; we must be a-travelin'." He backed up to the counter, and the boys, shifting their sugar- lumps to suit, stepped aboard and away they went. After that day Dukesborough thought she could see no reason why she might not be named among the leading towns of middle Georgia. A PARTY were enjoying the evening breeze on board a yacht. " The wind has made my moustache taste quite salt," remarked a young man who had been for some time occupied in biting the hair that fell over his upper lip. " I know it ! " innocently said a pretty girl. And she wondered why all her friends laughed. "People are so childish," she remarked. — Newspaper, ONE OF MR. WARD'S BUSINESS LETTERS. 223 ONE OF MR. WARD'S BUSINESS LETTERS. BY ARTEMUS WARD. To the Editor of the — — : Sir — I'm movin' along — slowly along— down tords your place. I want you should rite me a letter, saying how is the show biz- niss in your place. My show at present consists of three moral Bares, a Kangaroo (a amoozin little Raskal — t'would make you larf your- self to deth to see the little cuss jump up and squeal), wax figgers of G. Washington Gen. Tayler John Bunyan yvi ,•-, Capt. Kidd and Dr. Webster ^^ ^ in the act of killin' Dr. Park- man, besides several miscel- lanyus moral wax statoots of celebrated piruts & murder- ers, &c., ekalled by few & exceld by none. Now Mr. Editor, scratch orf a few lines sayin' how is the show bizniss down to your place. I shall hav my hanbills dun at your ofifiss. Depend upon it. I want you should git my han- bills up in flamin' stile. Also git up a tremenjus excitemunt in yr. paper 'bowt my onpar- aleld Show. We must fetch the public sumhow. We must wurk on their feelin's. Cum the m.oral on 'em strong. If it's a temperance community tell 'em I sined the pledge fifteen minits arter Ise born, but on the contery, ef your people take their tods, say Mister Ward is as Jenial a feller as ever we met, full of conwiviality, & the life an' sole of the Soshul Bored. Take, A GENIAL FELLOW. 224 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. don't you ? If you say anythin' abowt my show, say my snaiks is as harmliss as the new bom Babe. What a interestin study it is to see a zewological animil like a snake under perfect subjec- shun ! My kangaroo is the most larfable Uttle cuss I ever saw. All for 15 cents. I am anxyus to skewer your inflooence. I repeet in regard to them hanbills that I shall git em struck orf up to your printin' office. My perlitercal sentiments agree with yourn exactly, I know they do, becawz I never saw a man v/hoos didn't. Respectively yures, A. Ward. P. S.— You scratch my back & He scratch your back. WOMAN SUFFRAGE. BY R. J. BURDETTE. The women in Kansas vote at the school elections. At a recent election at Osage City one woman went up to vote, but before she got through telling the judges what a time her Willie had with the scarlet fever when he was only two years old, it was time to close the polls and she had forgotten to deposit her ballot. ON ''FORTS." 225 ^ ON "FORTS." BY ART EM US WARD. Every man has got a Fort. It's sum men's fort to do one thin^, and some other men's fort to do another, while there is numeris shiftliss critters goin' round loose whose fort is not to do nothin'. Shakspeer rote good plase, but he wouldn't hav succeeded as a Washington correspondent of a New York daily paper. He lackt the rekesit fancy and imagginashun. That's so ! Old George Washington's Fort was not to hev eny public man of the present day resemble him to eny alarmin' extent. Whare bowts can George's ekal be found ? I ask, & boldly answer no whares, or any whare else. Old man Townsin's Fort was to maik Sassyperiller. " Goy to the world ! anuther life saived ! " (Cotashun from Townsin's advertisemunt.) Cyrus Field's Fort is to lay a sub-machine tellegraf under the boundin billers of the Oshun, and then have it Bust. Spaldin's Fort is to maik Prepared Gloo, which mends every- thing. Wonder ef it will mend a sinner's wickid waze. (Im- promtoo goak.) Zoary's Fort is to be a femaile circus feller. My Fort is the grate moral show bizniss & ritin choice famerly literatoor for the noospapers. That's what's the matter with ;;/^. &., &., &. So I mite go on to a indefnit extent. Twict Iv'e endevered to do things which thay wasn't my Fort. The fust time was when I undertuk to lick a owdashus cuss who cut a hole in my tent & krawld threw. Sez I, " My jentle Sir, go out or I shall fall onto you putty hevy." Sez he, " Wade in. Old wax figgers," whereupon I went for him, but he cawt me powerful on the hed & knockt me threw the tent into a cow pastur. He pursood the attack & flung me into a mud puddle. As I arose & rung out my drencht garmints I koncluded fitin wasn't my Fort. I'le now rize the kurtin upon Seen 2nd: It is rarely seldum that I seek consolation in the Flowin' Bole. But in a certain town in Injianny in the Faul of 18 — , my orgin grinder got sick with the fever & died, I never felt so ashamed 226 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. in my life, & I thowt I'd hist in a few swallows of suthinj strength'nin. Konsequents was I histid in so muchldident zackly know whare bowts I was. I turned my livin wild beasts of Pray loose into the streets and spilt all my wax wurks. I then bet 1 cood play hoss. So I hitched myself to a Kanawl bote, there bein' two other hosses hitcht on also, one behind and anuther ahead of me. The driver hollerd for us to git up, and we did. But the hosses bein' onused to sich a arrangemunt begun to kick PLAYING HORSE. & squeal and rair up. Konsequents was I was kickt vilently in the stummuck & back, and presuntly I fownd myself in the Kanawl with the other hosses, kickin' & yellin' like a tribe of Cusscaroorus sawijis. I was rescood, & as I was bein' carrid to the tavern on a hemlock Bored I sed in a feeble voise, "Boys, playin' hoss isn't my Fort." MoRUL— Never don't do nothin' which isn't your Fort, for ef you do you'll find yourself splashin' round in the Kanawl, figger- atively speakin'. THE FOX AND THE CROW. l^^ THE FOX AND THE CROW. BY GEO. T. LANIGAN. A Crow, having secured a Piece of Cheese, flew with its Prize to a lofty Tree, and was preparing to devour the Luscious Morsel, when a crafty Fox, halting at the foot of the Tree, began to cast jK^^""'' THE FOX. about how he. might obtain it. ';ep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef Roast turkey. Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock, Canvas-back duck, from Baltimore. Prairie hens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens. Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips, Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early Rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear ai;d .ser- ved with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, South- ern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. E UROPEAN DIE T. 2 '' -> Apple pie. Apple fritters. Peach pie. American mince pie. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry. Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries, which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water — not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator. Americans intending to spend a year or so in European hotels, will do well to copy this bill and carry it along. They will find it an excellent thing to get up an appetite with, in the dispiriting presence of the squalid table d' hote. We read that Esaw sold out hiz birth rite for soup, and menny wonder at hiz extravegance, but Esaw diskovered arly, what menny a man haz diskovered since, that it iz hard work tew live on a pedigree. If i waz starving, I wouldn't hesitate tew swap oph all the pedi- gree I had, and all mi relashuns had, for a quart of pottage, and throw two grate grandfathers into the bargain. Josh Billings. 234 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE VACATION OF MUSTAPPIA BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE, Now in the sixth mouth, in the reign of the good Caliph, it was so that Miistapha said, "I am« wearied with much work; thought, care and worry have worn me out; I need repose, for the hand of exhaustion is upon me, and death even now heth at the door." And he called his physician, vS\ who felt of his pulse and looked upon his tongue and said: " TWODOLLAHS !' " Twodollahs ! " (For this was the oath by which all physi- cians swore.) *' Of a verity thou must have rest. Flee unto the valley of quiet, and close thine eyes in dreamful rest; hold back thy brain from thought and thy hand froj3i labor, or you will be a candidate for the asylum in three week-. "* THE VACATION OF MUSTAPHA. 235 And he heard him, and went out and put the business in the hands of the clerk, and went away to rest in the valley of quiet. And he went to his Uncle Ben's, whom he had not seen for lo I these fourteen years. Now, his Uncle Ben was a farmer, and abode in the valley of rest, and the mountains of repose rose round about him. And he was rich, and well favored, and strone as an ox, and healthy as an onion crop. Ofttimes he boasted to his neighbors that there was not a lazy bone in his body, and he swore that he hated a lazy man. And Mustapha wist not that it was so. But when he reached his Uncle Ben's they received him with great joy, and placed before him a supper of homely viands well cooked, and piled up on his plate Hke the wreck of a box-car. And when he could not eat all, they laughed him to scorn. And after supper they sat up with him and talked with him about relatives whereof he had never, in all his life, so much as heard. And he answered their questions at random, and lied unto them, professing to know Uncle Ezra and Aunt Bethesda, and once he said that he had a letter from Uncle George last Week. Now they all knew that Uncle George was shot in a neighbor's sheep pen, three years ago, but Mustapha wist not that it was so, and he was sleepy, and only talked to fill up the time. And then they talked politics to him, and he hated politics. So about one o'clock in the morning they sent him to bed. Now the spare room wherein he slept was right under the roof, and there were ears and bundles of ears of seed corn hunsf from the rafters, and he bunged his eyes with the same, and he hooked his chin in festoons of dried apples, and shook dried herbs and seeds down his back as he walked along, for it was dark. And when he sat up in bed in the night he ran a scythe in his ear. And it was so that the four boys slept with him, for the bed was wide. And they were restless, and slumbered crosswise and kicked, so that Mustapha slope not a wink that night, neither closed he his eyes. And about the fourth hour after midnight his Uncle Ben smote him on the back and spake unto him, saying: " Awake, arise, rustle out of this and wash your face, for thr liver and bacon are fried and the breakfast waiteth. You wih ^ 2 -'6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF nUMOR. find the well down at the other end of the cow-lot. Take a towel with you." When they had eaten, his Uncle Ben spake unto him, saying: "Come, let us stroll around the farm." And they walked about eleven miles. And his Uncle Ben sat him upon a wagon and taught him how to load hay. Then they drove into the barn, and he taught him how to unload it. Then they girded up their loins and walked four miles, even into the forest, and his Uncle Ben taught him how to chop wood, and then walked back to supper. And the morning and the evening were the first day, and I.Iustapha wished that he were dead. And after supper his Uncle Ben spoke once more, and said: "Come, let us have some fun." And so they hooked up a team and drove nine miles, down to Belcher's Branch, where there was a hop. And they danced until the second hour in the morning. When the next day was come— which wasn't long, for already the night was far spent— his Uncle Ben took him out and taught him how to make rail fence. And that night there was a wed- ding, and they danced, and made merry, and drank, and ate, and when they went to bed at three o'clock, Mustapha prayed that death might come to him before breakfast-time. But breakfast had an •early start, and got there first. And his Uncle Ben too^c him down to the creek, and taught him how to wash and shear sheep. And when evening was come they went to spelling-school, and they got home at the first hour after midnight, and Uncle Ben marveled that it was so early. And he lighted his pipe, and sat up for an hour and told Mustapha all about the forty acres he bought last spring of old Mosey Stringer, to finish out that north half, and about the new colt that was foaled last spring. And when Mustapha went to bed that morning he bethought himself of a dose of strychnine he had with him, and he said his prayers wearily, and he took it. But the youngest boy was restless that night, and kicked all Hhe poison out of him in less then ten seconds. And in the morning, while it was yet night, they ate breakfast. And his Uncle Ben took him out and taught him how to dig a ditch. And when evening was come there was a revival meeting at Ebenezer Methodist church, and they all went. And there were three regular preachers and two exhc.ters, and a Baptist evangel- THE VACATION OF MUST A PH A. 237 ist. And when midnight was come, they went home and sat up and talked over the meeting until it was bed-time. Now, when Mustapha was at home, he left his desk at the fifth hour in the afternoon, and he went to bed at the third hou- HE SMOTE HIM 1^ ^/ after sunset, and he arose not until the sun was high in the heavens. So the next day, when his Uncle Ben would take him out into the field and show him how to make a posc-and-rail fence, 2 :> 8 MARK TWAIN ' S LIBRA J? Y OF HUMOR. Mustapha would swear at him, and smote him with an axe-helve and fled, and got himself home. And Mustapha sent for his physician and cursed him. And he said he was tired to death; he turned his face to the wall and died. So Mustapha was gathered to his fathers. And his physician and his friends mourned and said, "Alas, he did not rest soon enough. He tarried at his. desk too long." But his Uncle Ben, who came in to attend the funeral, and had to do all his weeping out of one eye, because the other was blacked half way down to his chin, said it was a pity, but Mus- tapha was too awfully lazy to live, and he had no get up about him. But Mustapha wist not what they said, because he was dead. So they divided his property among them, and said if he wanted a tombstone he might have attended to it himself, while he was yet alive, because they had no time. — Burlington Hawkeye. What the milkman said when he found a fish in the lacteal fluid: " Good heavens ! the brindle cow has been in swimming agai n . ' ' — Newspaper. THE FIRST PIANO IN A MINING CAMP. -jig THE FIRST PIANO IN A MINING CAMP. BY SAM DAVIS. /T)R. SAMUEL DAVIS was formerly a reporter for the San Fiancisco ^^ Argojiaut, and is now the editor of the Carson Apical. In 1858 — it might have been five years earUer or later; this is not the history for the pubhc schools — there was a little camp about ten miles from Pioche, occupied by upwards of three hun- dred miners, every one of whom might have packed his prospect- ing implements and left for more inviting fields any time before sunset. When the day was over, these men did not rest from their labors, like the honest New England agriculturist, but sang, danced, gambled, and shot each other, as the mood seized them. One evening the report spread along the main street (which was the only street) that three men had been killed at Silver Reef, and that the bodies were coming in. Presently a lumber- ing old conveyance labored up the hill, drawn by a couple of horses, well worn out with their pull. The cart contained a good-sized box, and no sooner did its outlines become visible, through the glimmer of a stray light here and there, than it began to affect the idlers. Death always enforces respect, and even though no one had caught sight of the remainr, the crowd gradually became subdued, and when the horses came to a stand- still, the cart was immediately surrounded. The driver, however, was not in the least impressed with the solemnity of his commission. " All there ? " asked one. '* Haven't examined. Guess so." The driver filled his pipe, and lit it as he continued : " Wish the bones and load had gone over the grade ! " A man who had been looking on stepped up to the man at once. " I don't know who you have in that box, but if they happen to be any friends of mine, I'll lay you alongside." "We can mighty soon see," said the teamster, coolly. "Just burst the lid off, and if they happen to be the men you want, I'm here." The two looked at each other for a moment, and then the crowd gathered a little closer, anticipating trouble. " I believe that dead men are entitled to good treatment, and when you talk about hoping to see corpses go over a bank, all 240 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. 1 dave to saj' is, that it will be better for you if the late lamented ain't my friends." " We'll open the box. I don't take back what I've said, and if my language don't suit your ways of thinking, I guess I can stand it." With these words the teamster began to pry up the lid. He got a board off, and then pulled out some old rags. A strip of something dark, like rosewood, presented itself. " Eastern coffins, by thunder ! " said several, and the crowd looked quite astonished. Some more boards flew up, and the man who was ready to defend his friend's memory shifted his weapon a little. The cool manner of the teamster had so irritated him that he had made up his mind to pull his weapon at the first sight of the dead, even if the deceased was his worst and oldest enemy. Presently the whole of the box cover was off, and the teamster, clearing away the packing revealed to the astonished group the top of something which puzzled all alike " Boys," said he, " this is a planner." A general shout of laughter went up, and the man who had been so anxious to enforce respect for the dead, muttered some- thing about feeling dry, and the keeper of the nearest bar was several ounces better off by the time the boys had given the joke all the attention it called for. Had a dozen dead men been in the box, their presence in the camp could not have occasioned half the excitement that the arrival of that lonely piano caused. By the next morning it was known that the instrument was to grace a hurdy-gurdy saloon, owned by Tom Goskin, the leading gambler in the place. It took nearly a week to get this wonder on its' legs, and the owner was the proudest individual in the State. It rose gradually from a recumbent to an upright position amid a confusion of tongues, after the manner of the tower of Babel. Of course everybody knew just how such an instrument should be put up. One knew where the "off hind leg" should ' go, and another was posted on the " front piece." Scores of men came to the place every day to assist. " I'll put the bones in good order." " If you want the wires tuned up, I'm the boy." " I've '/^^ standing stern up just as before. There was a long swell on the ocean now, and she'd rise and lean over a little on each wave, but she'd come up again just as straight as before. That night passed as the last one had, and in the morn- ing we found we'd drifted a good deal farther from the Thomas Hyke, but she was floating just as she had been, like a big buoy that's moored over a sand-bar. We couldn't see a sign of the boats, and we about gave them up. We had our breakfast, which was a pretty poor meal, being nothing but hard-tack and what was left of a piece of boiled beef. After we'd sat for awhile doing nothing, but feeling mighty uncomfortable, William Ander- son said: ' Look here, do you know that I think we would be three fools to keep on shivering all night and living on hard-tack in the day-time, when there's plenty on that vessel for us to eat, and to keep us warm. If she's floated that way for two days and two nights, there's no knowing how much longer she'll float, and we might as well go on board and get the things we want as not.' REMARKABLE WRECK OF THE " THOMAS HYKE." 269 ' All right,' said I, for I v/as tired doing nothing, and Sam was as willing as anybody. So we rowed up to the steamer, and stopped close to the deck, which, as I said before, was standing straight up out of the water like the wall of a house. The cabin door, which was the only opening into her, was about twenty feet above us, and the ropes which we had tied to the rails of the stairs inside were still hanging down. Sam was an active young- ster, and he managed to climb up one of these ropes; but when he got up to the door he drew it up and tied knots in it about a foot apart, and then he let it down to us, for neither William Anderson nor me could go up a rope hand-over-hand without knots or something to hold on to. As it was, we had a lot of bother gettmg up, but we did it at last; and then we walked up the stairs, treading on the front part of each step instead of the top of it, as we would have done if the stairs had been in their proper position. When we got to the floor of the cabin, which was now perpendicular like a wall, we had to clamber down by means of the furniture, which was screwed fast, until we reached the bulkhead, which was now the floor of the cabin. Close to this bulkhead was a small room, which was the steward's pantry, and here we found lots of things to eat, but all jumbled up in a way that made us laugh. The boxes of biscuits and the tin cans and a lot of bottles in wicker covers were piled up on one end of the room, and everything in the lockers and drawers was jumbled together. William Anderson and me set to work to get out what we thought we'd want, and we told Sam to climb up into some of the staterooms, of which there were four on each side of the cabin, and get some blankets to keep us warm, as well as a few sheets, which we thought we could rig up for an awning to the lx>at — for the days were just as hot as the nights were cool. When we'd collected what we wanted, William Anderson and me climbed into our own rooms, thinking we'd each pack a valise with what we most wanted to save of our clothes and things; and while we were doing this, Sam called out to us that it was rain- ing. He was sitting at the cabin door, looking out. I first thought to tell him to shut the door, so's to keep the rain from coming in; but when I thought how things really were, I laughed at the idea. There was a sort of little house built over the entrance to the cabin, and in one end of it was the door; and in the way the ship now was, the open doorway was underneath the little 270 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. house, and of course no rain could come in. Pretty soon we heard the rain pouring down, beating on the stern of the vessel hke hail. We got to the stairs and looked out. The rain was falling in perfect sheets, in a way you never see, except round about the tropics. ' It's a good thing we're inside,' said William Anderson, ' for if we'd been out in this rain we'd been drowned in the boat.' I agreed with him, and we made up our minds to stay where we were until the rain was over. Well, it rained about four hours; and. when it stopped and we looked out, we saw our little boat nearly full of water, and sunk so deep that if one of us had stepped on her she'd have gone down, sure. ' Here's a pretty kettle of fish,' said William Anderson; ' there's nothing for us to do now but to stay where we are.' I believe in his heart he was glad of that, for if ever a man was tired of a little boat, William Anderson was tired of that one we'd been in for two days and two nights. At any rate there was no use talkmg about it, and we set to work to make ourselves comfortable. We got some mattresses and pillows out of the staterooms, and when it began to get dark we lighted the lamp, which we had filled with sweet- oil from a flask in the pantry, not finding any other kind, and we hung it from the railing of the stairs. We had a good night's rest, and the only thing that disturbed me was William Anderson lifting up his head every time he turned over, and saying how much better this was than that blasted little boat. The next morn- ing we had a good breakfast, even making some tea with a spirit lamp we found, using brandy instead of alcohol. William Ander- son and I wanted to get into the captain's room, which was near the stern, and pretty high up, so as to see if there was anything there that we ought to get ready to save when a vessel should come along and pick us up; but we were not good at climbing, like Sam, and we didn't see how we could get up there. Sam said he was sure he had once seen a ladder in the compartment just forward of the bulkhead, and as William was very anxious to get up to the captain's room, we let the boy go and look for it. There was a sliding door in the bulkhead under our feet, and we opened this far enough to let Sam get through, and he scrambled down like a monkey into the next compartment, which was light enough, although the lower half of it, which was next to the engine-room, was under the water-line. Sam actually found a ladder with hooks at one end of it, and while he was handing it up to us. REMARKABLE WRECK OF THE ''THOMAS HYKEy 271 which was very hard to do, for he had to climb up on all sorts of things, he let it topple over, and the end with the iron hooks fell against the round glass of one of the port-holes. The glass was very thick and strong, but the ladder came down very heavy and shivered it. As bad luck would have it, this window was l:)elow the water-line, and the water came rushing in in a big spout. We chucked blankets down to Sam for him to stop up the hole, but 'twas of no use; for it was hard for him to get at the window, and when he did the water came in with such force that he couldn't get a blanket in the hole. We were afraid he'd be drowned down there, and told him to come out as quick as he could. He put up the ladder again, and hooked it on to the door in the bulkhead, and we held it while he climbed up. Looking down through the doorway, we saw, by the way the water was pouring in at the opening, that it wouldn't be long before that compartment was filled up ; so we shoved the door to and made it all tight, and then said William Anderson : ' The ship'U sink deeper and deeper as that fills up, and the water may get up to the cabin door, and we must go and make that as tight as we can.' Sam had pulled the lad- der up after him, and this we found of great use in getting to the foot of the cabin stairs, locked and bolted it; and as it fitted pretty tight, we didn't think it would let in much water if the ship sunk that far. But over the top of the cabin stairs were a couple of folding doors, which shut down horizontally when the ship was in its proper position, and which were only used in very bad, cold weather. These we pulled to and fastened tight, thus having a double protection against the water. Well, we didn't get this done any too soon, for the water did come up to the cabin door, YYm THE PORT-HOLE. We shut the cabin door, and 272 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. and a little trickled in from the outside door, and through the cracks in the inner die. But we went to work and stopped these up with strips from the sheets, which we crammed well in with our pocket-knives. Then we sat down on the steps and waited to see what would happen next. The doors of all the state- rooms were open, and we could see through the thick plate-glass windows in them, which were all shut tight, that the ship was sinking more and more as the water came in. Sam climbed up into one of the after staterooms, and said the outside water was nearly up to the stern; and pretty soon we looked up to the two port-holes in the stern, and saw that they were covered with water; and as more and more water could be seen there, and as the light came through less easily, we knew that we were sinking under the surface of the ocean. ' It's a mighty good thing,' said Will- iam Anderson, ' that no water can get in here.' William had a hopeful kind of mind, and always looked on the bright side of things; but I must say that I was dreadfully scared when I looked through those stern windows and saw water instead of sky. It began to get duskier and duskier as we sank lower and lower, but still we could see pretty well, for it's astonishing how much light comes down through water. After a little while we noticed that the light remained about the same; and then William Ander- son, he sings out, ' Hooray, we've stopped sinking !' ' What dif- ference does that make?' says I, 'we must be thirty or forty feet under water, and more yet for aught I know.' ' Yes, that may be,' said he, ' but it is clear that all the water has got into that compartment that can get in, and we have sunk just as far dov;n as we are going.' 'But that don't help matters,' said I; 'thirty or forty feet under water is just as bad as a thousand is, to a drowning man.' ' Drowning !' said William; 'how are you going to be drowned ? No water can get in here.' ' Nor no air, either,' said I; 'and people are drowned for want of air, as I take it.' ' It would be a queer sort of thing,' said William, ' to be drowned in the ocean, and yet stay as dry as a chip. But it's no use being worried about air. We've got enough here to last us for ever so long. This stern compartment is the biggest in the ship, and it's got lots of air in it. Just think of that hold ! It must be nearly full of air. The stern compartment of the hold has got nothing in it but sewing-machines. I saw 'em loading her. The pig-iron was mostly amidships, or at least forward of this com- REMARKABLE WRECK OF THE " THOMAS HYKE." 2 73 partment. Now, there's no kind of a cargo that'll accommodate as much air as sewing-machines. They're packed in wooden frames, not boxes, and don't fill up half the room they take. There's air all through and around 'em. It's a very comforting thing to think the hold isn't filled up solid with bales of cotton or wheat in bulk.' It might be comforting, but I couldn't get much good out of it. And now Sam, who had been scrambling all over the cabin to see how things were going on, sung out that the water was leaking in a little again at the cabin door and around some of the iron frames of the windows. ' It's a lucky thing,' said William Anderson, ' that we didn't sink any deeper, or the pressure of the water would have burst in those heavy glasses. And what we've got to do now is, to stop up all the cracks. The more we work, the livelier we'll feel.' We tore off more strips of sheets, and went all round, stopping up cracks wherever we found them. ' It's fortunate,' said William Anderson, 'that Sam found that ladder, for we would have had hard work getting to the Vt^in- dows of the stern staterooms without it; but by resting it on the bottom step of the stairs, which now happens to be the top one, we can get to any part of the cabin.* I couldn't help thinking that if Sam hadn't found the ladder it would have been a good deal better for us; but I didn't want to damp William's spirits, and I said nothing. " And now I beg your pardon, sir," said the narrator, address- ing the Shipwreck Clerk, <' but I forgot that you said you'd finish this story yourself. Perhaps you'd like to take it up just here ? " The Shipwreck Clerk seemed surprised, and had, apparently, forgotten his previous offer. " Oh, no," said he, " tell your own story. This is not a matter of business." "Very well, then," said the brother-in-law of J. George Watts, " I'll go on. We made everything as tight as we could, and then we got our supper, having forgotten all about dinner, and being very hungry. We didn't make any tea, and we didn't light the lamp, for we knew that would use up air ; but we made a better meal than three people sunk out of sight in the ocean had a right to expect. ' What troubles me most,' said William Ander- son, as he turned in, ' is the fact that if we are forty feet under water, our flagpole must be covered up. Now, if the flag was sticking out, upside down, a ship sailing by would see it and 2 74 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. would know there was something wrong.' ' If that's all that troubles you,' said I, ' I guess you'll sleep easy. And if a ship was to see the flag, I wonder how they'd know we were down here, and how they'd get us out if they did ! ' ' Oh, they'd man- age it,' said William Anderson; 'trust those sea-captains for that.' And then he went to sleep. The next morning the air began to get mighty disagreeable in the part of the cabin where we were, and then William Anderson he says : ' What we've got to do is to climb up into the stern staterooms, where the air is pureV. We can come down here to get our meals, and then go up again to breathe comfortable.' ' And what are we going to do when the air up there gets foul? 'says I to William, who seemed to be making arrangements for spending the summer in our present quarters. ' Oh, that'll be all right,' said he. ' It don't do to be extravagant with air any more than with anything else. When we've used up all there is in this cabin, we can bore holes through the floor into the hold and let in air from there. If we're economical, there'll be enough to last for dear knows how long.' We passed the night each in a stateroom, sleeping on the end wall instead of the berth, and it wasn't till the afternoon of the next day that the air of the cabin got so bad we thought we'd have some fresh ; so we went down on the bulkhead, and with an auger that we found in the pantry we bored three holes, about a yard apart, in the cabin floor, which was now one of the walls of the room, just as the bulkhead was the floor, and the stern end, where the two round windows were, was the ceiling or roof. We each took a hole, and I tell you, it was pleasant to breathe the air which came in from the hold. 'Isn't this jolly?' said William Anderson. ' And we ought to be mighty glad that that hold wasn't loaded with codfish or soap. But there's noth- ing that smells better than new sewing-machines that haven't ever been used, and this air is pleasant enough for anybody.' By William's advice we made three plugs, by which we stopped up the holes when we thought we'd had air enough for the present. ' And now,' says he, ' we needn't climb up into those awkward staterooms any more. We can just stay down here and be comfortable, and let in air when we want it.' ' And how long do you suppose that air in the hold is going to last ? ' said I. ' Oh, ever so long,' said he, ' using it so economically as we do ; and when it stops coming out lively through these little holes, as I REMARKABLE WRECK GF THE '^THOMAS HYKE^ 275 suppose it will after a while, we can saw a big hole in this floor- ing, and go into the hold and do our breathing, if we want to.' That evening we did saw a hole about a foot square, so as to have plenty of air while we were asleep, but we didn't go into the hold, it being pretty well filled up with machines ; though the next day Sam and I sometimes stuck our heads in for a good sniff of air, though William Anderson was opposed to this, being of the opinion that we ought to put ourselves on short rations of breathing, so as to make the supply of air hold out as long as possible. ' But what's the good,' said I to William, ' of trying to make the air hold out if we've got to be suffocated in this place after all?' 'What's the good?' says he. 'Haven't you enough biscuits, and canned meats, and plenty of other things to eat, and a barrel of water in that room opposite the pantry, not to speak of wine and brandy, if you want to cheer yourself up a bit; and haven't we good mattresses to sleep on, and why shouldn't we try to live and be comfortable as long as we can?' ' What I want,' said I, ' is to get out of this box. The idea of being shut up in here down under water is more than I can stand. I'd rather take my chances going up to the surface and swimming about till I found a piece of the wreck, or something to float on.' ^ You needn't think of anything of that sort,' said William, ' for if we were to open a door or a window to get out, the water'd rush in and drive us back and fill up this place in no time ; and then the whole concern would go to the bottom. And what would you do if you did get to the top of the water ? It's not likely you'd find anything there to get on, and if you did you wouldn't live very long floating about with nothing to eat. No, sir,' says he, 'what we've got to do is to be content with the com- forts we have around us, and something will turn up to get us out of this ; you see if it don't.' There was no use talking against William Anderson, and I didn't say any more about getting out. As for Sam, he spent his time at the windows of the staterooms a-looking out. We could see a good way into the water, further than you would think, and we sometimes saw fishes, especially porpoises, swimming about, most likely trying to find out what a ship was doing hanging bows down under water. What troubled Sam was that a sword-fish might come along and jab his sword through one of the v/indows. In that case it would be all up, or rather down, with us. Every now and then he'd sing out, ' Here 2 76 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR. comes one ! ' And then, just as I'd give a jump, he'd say, ' No, it isn't ; it's a porpoise.' I thought from the first, and I think now, that it would have been a great deal better for us if that boy hadn't been along. That night there was a good deal of motion to the ship, and she swung about and rose up and down more than she had done since we'd been left in her. ' There must be a big sea running on top,' said William Anderson, 'and if we were' up there we'd be tossed about dreadful. Now the motion down here is just as easy as a cradle, and, what's more, we can't be sunk very deep ; for if we were, there wouldn't be any motion at all.' About noon the next day we felt a sudden tremble and shake run through the whole ship, and far down under us we heard a rumbling and grinding, that nearly scared me out of my wits. I first thought we'd struck bottom, but William he said that couldn't be, for it was just as light in the cabin as it had been, and if we'd gone down it would have grown m.uch darker, of course. The rumbling stopped after a little while, and then it seemed to grow lighter instead of darker ; and Sam, who was looking up at the stern windows over our heads, he sung out, 'Sky ! ' And, sure enough, we could see the blue sky, as clear as daylight, through those windows ! And then the ship, she turned herself on the slant, pretty much as she had been when her forward compartment first took in water, and we found ourselves standing on the cabin floor instead of the bulk- head. I was near one of the open staterooms, and as I looked in, there was the sunlight coming through the wet glass in the window, and more cheerful than anything I ever saw before in this world. William Anderson he just made one jump, and, unscrewing one of the stateroom windows, he jerked it open. We had thought the air inside was good enough to last some time longer ; but when that window was open and the fresh air came rushing in, it was a different sort of thing, I can tell you. William put his head out, and looked up and down and all around. ' She's nearly all out of water ! ' he shouted, 'and we can open the cabin door.' Then we all three rushed at those stairs, which were nearly right side up now, and we had the cabin door open in no time. When we looked out, we saw that the ship was truly floating pretty much as she had been when the captain and crew left her, though we all agreed that her deck didn't slant as much forward as it did then. ' Do you know what's happened ? ' REMARKABLE WRECK OF THE " THOMAS HYKE." 2jy sung out William Anderson, after he'd stood still for a minute, to look around and think. ' That bobbing up and down that the vessel got last night shook up and settled down the pig-iron inside of her, and the iron plates in the bow, that were smashed and loosened by the collision, have given way under the weight, and the whole cargo of pig-iron has burst through and gone to the bottom. Then, of course, up we came ! Didn't I tell you something would happen to make us all right?' " Well, I won't make this story any longer than I can help. The next day after that, we were taken off by a sugar-ship bound north, and we were caried safe back to Ulford, where we found our captain and the crew, who had been picked up by a ship after they'd been three or four days in their boats. This ship had sailed our way to find us, which, of course, she couldn't do, as at that time we were under water and out of sight. " And now, sir," said the brother-in-law of J. George Watts to the Shipwreck Clerk, "to which of your classes does this wreck of mine belong ? " " Gents," said the Shipwreck Clerk, rising from his seat, '* it's four o'clock, and at that hour this office closes." Qu. — How fast duz sound travel ? Ans. — This depends a good deal upon the natur ov the noize yu are talking about. The sound ov a dinner horn, for instance, travels a half a mile in a seckoned, while an invitashun tew git up in the morning I hav known to be 3 quarters ov an hour going up two pair ov stairs, and then not hav strength enuff left tew be heard. Josh Billings. 2 78 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR. EXPERIENCE OF THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEM^ BRANEOUS CROUP. BY MARK TWAIN. [^As related to the author by Mr. McWiUiams, a pleasant New York gentleman whom the said author met by chance on a Journey.'] Well, to go back to where I was before I digressed, to explain to you how that frightful and incurable disease, membraneous croup, was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror. I called Mrs. McWilliams's attention to little Penelope and said: " Darling, I wouldn't let that child be chewing that pine stick, if I were you." " Precious, where is the harm in it ? " said she, but at the same time preparing to take away the stick — for women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it; that is, married women. I replied: " Love, it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a child can eat." My wife's hand paused in the act of taking the stick, and returned itself to her lap. She bridled perceptibly, and said: " Hubby, you know better than that. You know you do ! Doctors all say that the turpentine in pine wood is good for weak back and the kidneys." "Ah — I was under a misapprehension. I did not know that the child's kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had recommended — " " Who said the child's spine and kidneys were affected?" " My love, you intimated it." " The idea ! I never intimated anything of the kind." " Why, my dear, it hasn't been two minutes since you said — " " Bothe'r what I said ! I don't care what I did say. There isn't any harm in the child's chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know it perfectly well. And she shall chew it, too. So there, now ! " THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANEOUS CROUP. 2 79 " Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reason- ing, and I will go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day. No child of mine shall want while I — " " O, please go along to your office and let me have some peace. A body can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to arguing and arguing and arguing, tHl you don't know what you are talking about, and you )iever do! " " Very well, it shall be as you say. But there is a want of logic in your last remark which — " However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had taken the child with her. That night at dinner she con- fronted me with a face as white as a sheet: " O, Mortimer, there's another ! Little Georgie Gordon is taken." " Membraneous croup ? " *' Membraneous croup." "Is there any hope for him?" " None in the wide world. O, what is to become of us ! " By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good-night and offer the customary prayer at the mother's knee. In the midst of "Now I lay me down to sleep," she gave a slight cough' My wife fell back like one stricken with death. But the next moment she was up and brimming with the activities which terror inspires. She commanded that the child's crib be removed from the nursery to our bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed. She took me with her, of course. We got matters arranged with speed. A cot bed was put up in my wife's dress- ino[-room for the nurse. But now Mrs. McWilliams said we were too far away from the other baby, and what if he were to have the symptoms in the night — and she blanched again, poor thing. We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery, and put up a bed for ourselves in a room adjoining. Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said, "Suppose the baby should catch it from Penelope ?" This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough to satisfy my wife, though she assisted in her own person and wellnigh pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry. We moved down-stairs; but there was no place there to stow 280 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. the nurse, and Mrs. McWiiliams said the nurse's experience would be an inestimable help. So we returned, bag and baggage, to our own bedroom once more, and felt a great gladness, like storm-buffeted birds that have found their nest again. Mrs. McWiiliams sped to the nursery to see how things were going on ther5. She was back in a moment with a new dread. She said: " Wliat can make Baby sleep so ? " I said: "Why, my darling. Baby always sleeps like a graven image." "I know, I know. But there's something peculiar about his sleep, now. He seems to — to — he seems to breathe so regularly. O, this is dreadful ! " "But, my dear, he always breathes regularly." "Oh, I know it, but there's something frightful about it now. His nurse is too young and inexperienced. Maria shall stay there with her, and be on hand if anything happens." "That is a good idea, but who will heipjw^.?" '' You can help me all I want. I wouldn't allow anybody to do anything but myself, any how, at such a time as this." I said I would feel mean to lie abed and sleep, and leave her to watch and toil over our little patient all the weary night. But she reconciled me to it. So old Maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the nursery. Penelope coughed twice in her sleep. " Oh, why doiit that doctor come ! Mortimer, this room is too warm. This room is certainly too warm. Turn off the register —quick ! " I shut it off, glancing at the thermometer at the same time, and wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child. The coachman arrived from down-town now, with the news that our physician was ill and confined to his bed. Mrs. McWiil- iams turned a dead eye upon me, and said in a dead voice: " There is a Providence in it. It is foreordained. He never was sick before. Never. We have not been living as we ought to live, Mortimer. Time and time again I have told you so. Now you see the result. Our child will never get well. Be thankful if you can forgive yourself; I never can forgive wj^self." I said, without intent to hurt, but with heedless choice of THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANEOUS CROUP. 28 1 words, that I could not see that we had been living such an abandoned life. *' Mortimer / " Do you want to bring the judgment upon Baby, too!" Then she began to cry, but suddenly exclaimed: "The doctor must have sent medicines 1" I said: " Certainly, They are here. I was only waiting for you to give me a chance." " Well, do give them to me! Don't you know that every mo- ment is precious now? But what was the use in sending medi- cines, when he knows that the disease is incurable? " I said that while there was life there was hope. " Hope ! Mortimer, you know no more what you are talking about than the child unborn. If you would — . As I live, the directions say, give one teaspoonful once an hour ! Once an hour ! — as if we had a whole year before us to save the child in ! Mortimer, please hurry. Give the poor perishing thing a table- spoonful, and try to be quick ! " " Why, my dear, a tablespoonful might — " " Z^^/zV drive me frantic ! .... There, there, there ! my precious, my own; it's nasty bitter stuff, but it's good for Nelly — good for Mother's precious darling; and it will make her well. There, there, there ! put* the little head on Mamma's breast and go to sleep, and pretty soon — oh, I know she can't live till morn- ing ! Mortimer, a tablespoonful every half hour will — . Oh, the child needs belladonna too; I know she does — and aconite. Get them, Mortimer. Now, do let me have my way. You know nothing about these things." We now went to bed, placing the crib close to my wife's pillow. . All this turmoil had worn upon me, and within two minutes I was something more than half asleep. Mrs. McWilliams roused me: " Darling, is that register turned on ? " "No." '• I thought as much. Please turn it on at once. The room is cold." I turned it on, and presently fell asleep again, I was aroused once more: " Dearie, would you mind moving the crib to your side of the bed ? It is nearer the register. ' >> 282 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. I moved it, but had a collision with the rug and woke up the child. I dozed off once more, while my wife quieted the suf- ferer. But in a little while these words came murmuring remotely through the fog of my drowsiness: " Mortimer, if we only had some goose-grease — will you ring ? " I climbed dreamily out, and stepped on a cat, which responded with a protest, and would have got a convincing kick for it if a chair had not got it instead. " Now, Mortimer, why do you want to turn up the gas and wake up the child again ? " " Because I want to see how much I am hurt, Caroline." " Well, look at the chair, too — I have no doubt it is ruined. Poor cat, suppose you had — " " Now I am not going to suppose anything about the cat. It never would have occurred if Maria had been allowed to remain here and attend to these duties, which are in her line, and are nut in mine." "Now, Mortimer, I should think you would be ashamed to make a remark like that. It is a pity if you cannot do the few little things I ask of you at such an awful time as this when our child—" " There, there, I will do anything you want. But I can't raise anybody with this bell. They're all gone to bed. Where is the goose-grease ? " " On the mantel-piece in the nursery. If you'll step there and speak to Maria — " I fetched the goose-grease and went to sleep again. Once more I was called: " Mortimer, I so hate to disturb you, but the room is still too cold for me to try to apply this stuff. Would you mind lighting the fire? It is all ready to touch a match to." I dragged myself out and lit the fire, and then sat down dis- consolate. " Mortimer, don't sit there and catch your death of cold. Come to bed." As I was stepping in, she said: " But wait a moment. Please give the child some more of the medicine." Which I did. It was a medicine which made a child more or less lively; so my wife made use of its waking interval to strip it THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANEOUS CROUP. 283 and grease it all over with the goose-oil. I was soon asleep once more, but once more I had to get up. "Mortimer, I feel a draft. I feel it distinctly. There is nothing so bad for this disease as a draft. Please move the crib in front of the fire." I did it; and collided with the rug again, which I threw in the fire. Mrs. McWilliams sprang out of bed and rescued it, and we had some words. I had another trifling interval of sleep, and then got up, by request, and constructed a flax-seed poultice. This was placed upon the child's breast, and left there to do its heal- ing work. A wood fire is not a permanent thing. I got up every twenty minutes and renewed ours, and this gave Mrs. McWilliams the opportunity to shorten the times of giving the medi- cines by ten minutes, which was a great satisfaction to her. Now and then, be- tween times, I reorganized the flax - seed poul- tices, and applied sin- apisms and other sorts of blisters where unoc- cupied places could be found upon the child. Well, toward morning the wood gave out, and my wife wanted me to go down cellar and get some more. I said: *' My dear, it is a laborious job, and the child must be nearly warm enough, with her extra clothing. Now mightn't we put on another layer of poultices and — " I. did not finish, because I was interrupted. I lugged wood up from below for some little time, and then turned in and fell to snoring as only a man can whose strength is all gone and whose soul is worn out. Just at broad daylight I felt a grip on my shoulder that brought me to my senses suddenly. My wife was glaring down upon me and gasping. As soon as she could com- mand her tontjue she said: KINDLING THE FIRE. 284 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " It is all over ! All over ! The child's perspiring ! What shall \vt do?" " Mercy ! how you terrify me ! /don't know what we ought to do. Maybe if we scraped her and put her in the draft again — " " O, idiot ! There is not a moment to lose ! Go for the doctor. Go yourself. Tell him he iftust come, dead or alive." I dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him. He looked at the child and said she was not dying. This was joy unspeakable to me, but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront. Then he said the child's cough was only caused by some trifling irritation or other in the throat. At this I thought my wife had a mind to show him the door. Now the doctor said he would make the child cough harder and dislodge the trouble. So he gave her something that sent her into a spasm of coughing, and presently up came a little wood splinter or so. "This child has n o membraneous croup," said he. " She has been chew- ing a bit of pine shingle or something of the kind, and got some little slivers in her throat. They won't do her any hurt." " No," said I, " I can well believe that. Indeed, the turpentine that is in them is very good for certain sorts of diseases that are peculiar to children. My wife will tell you so." But she did not. She turned away in disdain and left the room; and since that time there is one episode in our life which we never refer to. Hence the tide of our days flows by in deep and untroubled serenity. [Very few married men have such an experience as Mc Williams's, and so the author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give it a passing interest to the reader.] ;^ NEW KIND CROUP. MISS MALONY ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. 285 MISS MALONY ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. BY MARY MAPES DODGE. /T)RS. MARY MAPES DODGE, who was born at New York in 1838, is ^^ the editor of the St. Nicholas magazine, and is the author of many de- lightful books for young people published during the last twenty-five years. Och! don't be talkin*. Is it howld on, ye say? An' didn't I howld on till the heart of me was clane broke entirely, and me wastin' that thin you could clutch me wid yer two hands ! To think o' me toilin' like a nager for the six year I've been in Ameriky — bad luck to the day I iver left the owld coun- thry, to be bate by the likes o' them! (faix an' I'll sit down when I'm ready, so I will, Ann Ryan, an' ye'd better be list'nin' than drawin' your remarks) an' it's mysel', with five good characters from respect- able places, would be herdin' wid the hay- thens. The saints for- give me, but I'd be buried alive soon'n put up wid it a day longer. Sure an' I was a grane- horn not to be lavin' at 'onct when the missus kim into me kitchen wid her perlaver about the new waiter-man which was brought out from Californy. "He'll be here the night," says she, "and Kitty, it's meself looks to you to be kind and patient wid him, for he's a furriner," says she, a kind o' looking off. "Sure an' it's little I'll hinder nor interfare wid him nor any other, mum," says I, a kind o' FING WING. 286 MARK TWAIN ' S LIBKAR Y OF HUMOR. stiff, for I minded me how tliese French waiters, wid their paper collars and brass rings on their fingers, isn't company for no gurril brought up dacint and honest. Och! sorra a bit I knew what was comin' till the missus walked into me kitchen smilin', and says, kind o' schared, " Here's Fing Wing, Kitty, an' you'll have too much sinse to mind his bein' a little strange." Wid that she shoots the doore; and I, misthru sting if I was tidied up sufficient for me fine buy wid his paper collar, looks up and — Holy fathers! may I niver brathe another breath, but there stud a rale haythen Chineser a-grinnin' like he'd just come off a tay- box. If you'll belave me, the crayture was that yeller it 'ud sicken you to see him; and sorra stich was on him but a black night-gown over his trowsers and the front of his head shaved claner nor a copper biler, and a black tail a-hangin' down from behind, wid his two feet stook into the heathenesest shoes you ' ever set eyes on. Och! but I was up-stairs afore you could turn about, a givin' the missus warnin'; an' only stopt wid her by her raisin' me wages two dollars, and playdin' wid me how it was a Christian's duty to bear wid haythins and taitch 'em all in our power — the saints save us! Well, the ways and trials I had wid that Chineser, Ann Ryan, I couldn't be tellin'. Not a blissed thing cud I do but he'd be lookin' on wid his eyes cocked up'ard like two poomp-handles, an' he widdout a speck or a smitch o' whiskers on him, and his finger-nails full a yard long. But it's dying you'd be to see the missus a larnin' him, and he grinnin an' waggin' his pig-tail (which was pieced out long wid some black stoof, the haythen chate!) and gettin' into her ways won- derful quick, I don't deny, imitatin' that sharp, you'd be shur- prised, and ketchin' and copyin' things the best of us will do a- hurried wid work, yet don't want comin' to the knowledge of the family — bad luck to him! Is it ate wid him ? Arrah, an' would I be sittin' wid a hay- then, and he a-atin' wid drumsticks — yes, an' atin' dogs an' cats Uiiknownst to me, I warrant you, which is the custom of them Chinesers, till th3 thought made me that sick I could die. An' didn't the crayter proffer to help me a wake ago come Toosday, an' me a foldin' down me clane clothes for the ironin', an' fill his haythen mouth wid water, an' afore I could hinder squrrit it through his teeth stret over the best linen table-cloth, and fold it up tight, as innercent now as a baby, the dirty baste! But the MISS MALONY ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. 287 worrest of all was the copyin' he'd be doin', till ye'd be dishtracted. It's yerself knows the tinder feet that's on me since ever I've bin in this country. Well, owin' to that, I fell into the way o' slip- pin' me shoes off when I'd be settin down to pale the praties or the likes o' that, and, do ye mind, that haythin would do the same thing after me whiniver the missus set him parin' apples or tomaterses. The saints in heaven couldn't have made him belave hie cud kape the shoes on him when he'd be payling anything. Did I lave fur that ? Faix an' didn't he get me into trouble wid my missus, the haythin ? You're aware yerself how the boondles comin' from the grocery often contains more 'n '11 go into any- thing dacently. So, for that matter, I'd now and then take out a sup o' sugar, or flour, or tay, an' wrap it in paper and put it in me bit of a box tucked under the ironin' blankit the haw it cuddent be bodderin' any one. Well, what should it be, but this blessed Sathurday morn the mis- sus was a spakin' pleasant and respec'ful wid me in me kitchen, when the grocer boy comes in an' stands fornenst her wid his; boondles, an' she motions like to Fing Wing "(which I never would call him by that name nor any other but just haythin ), she motions to him, she does, for to take the boondles an' empty out the sugar an' what not where they belongs. If you'll belave me, Ann Ryan, what did that blatherin' Chineser do but take out a sup o' sugar, an' a handful o' tay, an' a bit o' chaze, right afore the missus, wrap them into bits o' paper, an' I spacheless wid shuprise, an' he the next minute up wid the ironin' blankit and puliin' out me box wid a show o' bein' sly to put them in, Och, the Lord forgive me, but THE VICTIM, 288 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. I clutched it, and the missus sayin', "O Kitty!" in a way that 'ud curdle your blood. " He's a haythin nager," says I. " I've found you out," says she. " I'll arrist him," says I. " It's you ought to be arristed," says she. "You won't," says I. " I will," says she; and so it went, till she give me such sass as I cuddent take from no lady, an' I give her warnin' an' left that instant, an' she a-pointin' to the doore. THE HODJA'S DONKEY ON HIS VERACITY. BY S. S. COX. A FRIEND calls on Narr-ed-din to borrow his donkey. " Very sorry," says the Hodja, who does not want to lend the animal, " but the donkey is not here ; I have hired him out for the day." Unfortunately, just at that moment the donkey begins to bray loudly, thus giving the direct lie to the Hodja. "How is this, Hodja?" says his friend; "you say the don- key is away, and here he is braying in the stable ! " The Hodja, nothing daunted, replies in a grave manner : " My dear sir, please do not demean yourself so low as to believe the donkey rather than myself — a fellow-man and a ven- erable Hodja with a long gray beard." The moral of the last fable some people will never perceive. It is this : An ass will always reveal himself by some inappropriate remark. Asses should be seldom seen, and never heard. The wise man hideth his ass wlien the borrower cometh around. LrrTLE BREECHES. •89 LITTLE BREECHES. BY JOHN HAY. ^OHN HAY, born in Salem, Ind., October 8, 1838, and best known as a humorist through his ''Pike County Ballads," has had a varied career in politics, war, diplomacy, journalism and literature. Appointed one cf Lincoln's private secretaries in 1861, he served with ability in the war, with distinction as Secretary of Legation in Paris, Vienna and Madrid, wrote his signally important book on Spain, "Castilian Days," became connected with the N. Y. Tribime on his return, and was afterwards Assistant Secretary of State under President Hayes. He is a graduate of Brown University, and was bred to the law. I don't go much on religion, I never ain't had no show; But I've got a midcllin' tight grip, sir, On the handful o' things I know. I don't pan out on the prophets And free-will, and that sort of thing — Bat I b'lieve in God and the angels, Ever sence one night last spring. I come into town with some turnips, And my little Gabe come along — No four-year-old in the county Could beat him for pretty and strong, Peart and chipper and sassy, Always ready to swear and fight — And I'd larnt him to chaw terbacker Jest to keep his milk-teeth white. The snow come down like a blanket As I passed by Taggart's store; I went in for a jug of molasses And left the team at the door. They scared at something and started — I heard one little squall, And hell-to-split over the prairie Went team, Little Breeches and all. 290 MARK TWAIN'S LIB RAF V OF HUMOR. LITTLE BREECHES. Hell-to-split over the prairie ! I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And sarched for 'em far and near. At last we struck horses and wagon. Snowed under a soft white mound, LITTLE BREECHES. Upsot, dead beat — but of little Gabe Nor hide nor hair was found And here all hope soured on me, Of my fellow-critter's aid — I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones, Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed. By this, the torches was played out, And me and Isrul Parr Went off for some wood to a sheepfold That he said was somewhar thar. We found it at last, and a little shed Where they shut up the lambs at night. We looked in and seen them huddled thar, So warm and sleepy and white; And THAR sot Little Breeches, and chirped, As peart as ever you see, *' I want a chaw of terbacker. And that's what's the matter of me." How did he git thar? Angels. He could never have walked in that storm, They jest scooped down and toted him To whar it was safe and warm. And I think that saving a little child. And bringing him to his own, Is a derned sight better business Than loafing around The Throne. 291 2Q2 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. BY W. D. HOWELLS. '• Our acquaintance has the charm of novelty every time we meet," she said once, when pressed hard by Mrs. Ellison. " We are growing better strangers, Mr. Arbuton and I. By and by, some morning, we shall not know each other by sight. I can barely recognize him now, though I thought I knew him pretty well once. I want you to understand that I speak as an unbiased spectator, Fanny." " Oh, Kitty ! how can you accuse me of trying to pry into your affairs?" cries injured Mrs. Ellison, and settles herself in a more comfortable posture for listening. " I don't accuse you of anything. I'm sure you've a right to know everything about me. Only, I want you really to know." "Yes, dear," says the matron, with hypocritical meekness. " Well," resumes Kitty, " there are things that puzzle me more and more about him — things that used to amuse me at first, because I didn't actually believe that they could be, and that I felt like defying afterwards. But now I can't bear up against them. They frighten me, and seem to deny me the right to be what T believe I am." " I don't understand you, Kitty." "Why, you've seen how it is with us at home, and how Uncle Jack has brought us up. We never had a rule for anything, except to do vvhat was right, and to be careful of the rights of others." "Well!" "Well, Mr. Arbuton seems to have lived in a world where everything is regulated by some rigid law that it would be death to break. Then, you know, at home we are always talking about people, and discussing them; but we always talk of each person for what he is in himself, and I always thought a person could refine himself if he tried, and was sincere, and not conceited. But he seems to judge people according to their origin and local- ity and calling, and to believe that all refinement must come from just such training and circumstances as his own. Without LOVE'S YOUNG DUE AM. 293 exactly aaying so, he puts everything else quite out of the ques- tion. He doesn't appear to dream that there can be any different opinion. He tramples upon all that I have been taught to believe; and though I clmg the closer to my idols, I can"t help, now and then, trying myself by his criterions; and then I find myself wanting in every civilized trait, and my whole life coarse and poor, and all my associations hopelessly degraded. I think his ideas are hard and narrow, and I believe that even my little experience would prove them false ; but then, they are his, and I can't reconcile them with what I see is good in him." Kitty spoke with half -averted face where she sat beside one of the front windows, looking absently out on the distant line of violet hills beyond Charlesbourg, and now and then lifting her glove from her lap and letting it drop again. "Kitty," said Mrs. Ellison in reply to her difficulties, "you oughtn't to sit against a light like that. It makes your profile quite black to any one back in the room." " Oh well, Fanny, I'm not black in reality." "Yes, but a young lady ought always to think how she is looking. Suppose some one was to come in." " Dick's the only one likely to come in just now, and he wouldn't mind it. But if you like it better, I'll come and sit by you," said Kitty, and took her place beside the sofa. Her hat was in her hand, her sacque on her arm ; the fatigue of a recent walk gave her a soft pallor, and languor of face and attitude. Mrs. Ellison admired her pretty looks, with a generous regret that they should be wasted on herself, and then asked, "Where were you this afternoon ? " " Oh, we went to the Hotel Dieu, for one thing, and afterwards we looked into the courtyard of the convent ; and there another of his pleasant little traits came out — a way he has of always putting you in the wrong, even when it's a matter of no conse- quence any way, and there needn't be any right or wrong about it. I remembered the place because Mrs. March, you know, showed us a rose that one of the nuns in the hospital gave her, and I tried to tell Mr. Arbuton about it, and he graciously too'k it as if poor Mrs. March had made an advance towards his acquaintance. I do wish you could see what a lovely place that courtyard is, Fanny. It's so strange that such a thing should be right there, in the heart of this crowded city ; but there it was 294 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. with its peasant cottage on one side, and its long low barns on the other, and those wide-horned Canadian cows munching at the racks of hay outside, and pigeons and chickens all about among their feet" — " Yes, yes ; never mind all that, Kitty. You know I hate nature. Go on about Mr. Arbuton," said Mrs. Ellison, who did not mean a sarcasm. " It looked like a farmyard in a picture, far out in the country somewhere," resumed I Kitty; " and Mr. Arbu- ton did it the honor to say it was just like Normandy." "Kitty !" " He did, indeed, Fanny ; and the cows didn't go d o w n on their knees out of gratitude either. Well, off on the right were the hospital buildings Climbing up, you know, with their stone walls and steep roofs, and windows dropped about over them, like our convent here ; and there was an artist there, sketching it all; he had such a brown, pleasant face, with a little black mustache and imperial, and such gay black eyes, that nobody could help falling in love with him ; and he was talking in such a free-and-easy way with the lazy workmen and women over- looking him. He jotted down a little image of the Virgin in a niche on the wall, and one of the people called out — Mr. Arbu- ton was translating — ' Look there ! with one touch he's made our Blessed Lady.' ' Oh,' says the painter, ' that's nothing , THE ARTIST. « LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. 295 with three touches I can make the entire Holy Family.' And they all laughed ; and that little joke, you know, won my heart, — I don't hear many jokes from Mr. Arbuton — and so I said what a blessed life a painter's must be, for it would give you a right to be a vagrant, and you could wander through the world, seeing everything that was lovely and funny, and nobody could blame you ; and I wondered everybody who had the chance didn't learn to sketch. Mr. Arbuton took it seriously, and said people had to have something more than the chance to learn before they could sketch, and that most of them were an affliction with their sketch-books, and he had seen too much of the sad effects of drawing from casts. And he put me in the wrong, as he always does. Don't you see ? I didn't want to learn draw- ing ; I wanted to be a painter, and go about sketching beautiful old convents, and sit on camp-stools on pleasant afternoons, and joke with people. Of course, he couldn't understand that. But 1 know the artist could. Oh, Fanny, if it had only been the painter whose arm I took that first day on the boat, instead of Mr. Arbuton ! But the worst of it is, he is making a hypocrite of me, and a cowardly, unnatural girl. I wanted to go nearer and look at the painter's sketch ; but I was ashamed to say I'd never seen a real artist's sketch before, and I'm getting to be r.shamed, or to seem ashamed, of a great many innocent things. He has a way of not seeming to think it possible that any one he associates with can differ from him. And I do differ from him. I differ from him as much as my whole past life differs from his; I know I'm just the kind of production he disapproves of, and that I'm altogether irregular and unauthorized and unjustifiable; and though it's funny to have him talking to me as if I must have the sympathy of a rich girl with his ideas, it's provoking, too, and it's very bad for me. Up to the present moment, Fanny, if you want to know, that's the principal effect of Mr. Arbuton on me. I'm being gradually snubbed and scared into treasons, stratagems, and spoils." Mrs. Ellison did not find all this so very grievous, for she was one of those women who like a snub from the superior sex, if it does not involve a slight to their beauty or their power of pleas- ing. But she thought it best not to enter into the question, and merely said, " But surely, Kitty, there are a great many things in Mr. Arbuton that you must respect." 296 MA RK TWAIN'S LIBRA RY OF HUMOR. "Respect? Oh, yes, indeed! But respect isn't just tha thing for one who seems to consider himself sacred. Say rexiercy Fanny ; say revere ! " Kitty had risen from her chair, but Mrs. Ellison waved her again to her seat with an imploring gesture. " Don't go, Kitty ; I'm not half done with you yet. You must tell me something more. You've stirred me up so, now. I know you don't always have such disagreeable times. You've often come home quite happy. What do you generally find to talk about ? Do tell me some particulars for once." "Why, little topics come up, you know. But sometimes we don't talk at all, because I don't like to say what I think or feel, for fear I should be thinking or feeling something vulgar. Mr. Arbuton is rather a blight upon conversation in that way. He makes you doubtful whether there isn't something a little common in breathing, and the circulation of the blood, and whether it wouldn't be true refinement to stop them." " Stuff, Kitty ! He's very cultivated, isn't he ? Don't you talk about books ? He's read everything, I suppose.' " Oh, yes, he's ;ra^ enough." "What do you mean?" " Nothing. Only sometimes it seems to me as if he hadn't read because he loved it, but because he thought it due to him- self. But maybe I'm mistaken. I couid imagine a delicate poem shutting up half its sweetness from his cold, cold scrutiny, — if you will excuse the floweriness of the idea." "Why, Kitty ! don't you think he's refined ? I'm sure, I think he's diVery refined person." " He's a very elaborated person. But I don't think it would make much difference to him what our opinion of him was. His own good opinion would be quite enough." " Is he — is he — always agreeable ? " " I thought we were discussing his mind, Fanny, I don't know that I feel like enlarging upon his manners," said Kitty, slyly. "But surely, Kitty," said the matron, with an air of argu- ment, " there's some connection between his mind and his manners." "Yes, I suppose so. I don't think there's much between his heart and his manners. They seem to have been put on him instead of having come out of him. He's very well trained, and LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. 20 7 nine times out of ten he's so exquisitely polite that it's wonderful • but the tenth time he may say something so rude that you can't believe it." " Then you like him nine tim.es out of ten." "I didn't say that. But for the tenth time, it's certain, his training doesn't hold out, and he seems to have nothing natural to fall back upon. But you can believe that, if he knew he'd been disagreeable, he'd be sorry for it." '' Why, then, Kitty, how can you say that there's no connection between his heart and manners ? This very thing proves that they come from his heart. Don't be illogical, Kitty," said Mrs. Ellison, and her nerves added, sotto voce, "if you are so abomi- nably provoking ! " " Oh," responded the young girl, with the kind of laugh that meant it was, after all, not such a laughing matter, "I didn't say he'd be sorry for jw// Perhaps he would; but he'd be certain to be sorry for himself. It's with his politeness as it is with his reading ; he seems to consider it something that's due to himself as a gentleman to treat people well ; and it isn't in the least as if he cared for them. He wouldn't like to fail in such a point." " But, Kitty, isn't 'that to his credit ? " " Maybe. I don't say. If I knew more about the world, per- haps I should admire it. But now, you see" — and here Kitty's laugh grew more natural, and she gave a subtle caricature of Mr. Arbuton's air and tone as she spoke — " I can't help 'feehng that it's a little — vulgar." Mrs. Ellison could not quite make out how much Kitty really meant of what she had said. She gasped once or twice for argu- ment ; then she sat up, and beat the sofa-pillows vengefuUy in composing herself anew, and finally — " Well, Kitty, I'm sure I don't know what to make of it all," she said with a sigh. " Why, we're not obliged to make anything of it, Fanny, there's that comfort," replied Kitty; and then there was a silence, while she brooded over the whole affair of her acquaintance with Mr. Arbuton, which this talk had failed to set in a more pleasant or hopeful light. It had begun like a romance; she had pleased her fancy, if not her heart, with the poetry of it; but at last she felt exiled and strange in his presence. She had no right to a different result, even through any deep feeling in the matter; but while she owned, with her half-sad, half-comical, consciousness. 2q8 mark twaix's library of humor. that she had been tacitly claiming and expecting too much, she softly pitied herself, with a kind of impersonal compassion, as if it were some other girl whose pretty dream had been broken. Its ruin involved the loss of another ideal; for she was aware that there had been gradually rising in her mind an image of Boston, different alike from the holy place of her childhood, the sacred city of the anti-slavery heroes and martyrs, and from the jesting, easy, sympathetic Boston of Mr. and Mrs. March. This new Boston with which Mr. Arbuton inspired her, was a Boston of mysterious prejudices and lofty reservations; a Boston of high and difficult tastes, that found its social ideal in the Old World, and that shrank from contact with the reality of this; a Boston as alien as Europe to her simple experiences, and that seemed to be proud only of the things that were unlike other American things; a Boston that would rather perish by fire and sword than be suspected of vulgarity; a critical, fastidious, and reluctant Boston, dissatisfied with the rest of the hemisphere, and gelidly self-satisfied in so far as it was not in the least the Boston of her fond preconceptions. It was, doubtless, no more the real Boston we know and love, than either of the others; and it perplexed her more than it need, even if it had not been mere phantasm. It made her suspicious of Mr. Arbuton's behavior towards her, and observant of little things that might very well have otherwise escaped her. The bantering humor, the light-hearted trust and self-reliance with which she had once met hiin, deserted her, and only returned fitfully when some accident called her out of her- self, and made her forget the differences that she now too plainly saw in their ways of thinking and feeling. It was a greater and greater effort to place herself in sympathy with him; she relaxed into a languid self-contempt, as if she had been playing a part, when she succeeded. " Sometimes, Fanny," she said, now, after a long pause, speaking in behalf of that other girl she had been thinking of, " it seems to me as if Mr. Arbuton were all gloves and slim umbrella — the mere husk of well-dressed culture and good manners. His looks do promise everything; but, oh dear me! I should be sorry for any one that was in love with him. Just imagine some girl meeting with such a man, and taking a fancy to him! I suppose she never would quite believe but that he must somehov/ be what she first thought him, and she w^ould go down to her grave believing that she had failed to understand him. What a curious story it would make!" LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. OQO "Then why don't you v/rite it, Kitty?" asked Mrs. Ellison, *'No one could do it better." Kitty flushed quickly; then she smiled: "Oh, I don't think I could do it at all. It wouldn't be a very easy story to work out. Perhaps he might never do anything positively disagreeable enough to make anybody condemn him. The only way you could show his character would be to have her do and say hate- ful things to him, when she couldn't help it, and then repent of it, v,'hile he was impassively perfect through everything. And perhaps, after all, he might be regarded by some stupid people as the injured one. Well, Mr. Arbuton has been very polite to us, I'm sure, Fanny," she said after another pause, as she rose from her chair, "and m.aybe I'm unjust to him. I beg his par- don of you; and I wish," she added, with a dull disappointment quite her own, and a pang of surprise at words that seemed to utter themselves, "that he would go away." " Why, Kitty, I'm shocked !" said Mrs. Ellison, rising from her cushions. "Yes; so am I, Fanny." "Are you really tired of him, then?" Kitty did not answer, but turned away her face a little, where she stood beside the chair in which she had been sitting. Mrs. Ellison put out her hand towards Ler. "Kitty, come here," she said with imperious tenderness. "No, I won't, Fanny," answered the young girl, in a trembling voice. She raised the glove that she had been nervously swing- ing back and forth, and bit hard upon the button of it. "I don't know whether I'm tired of Mm — though he isn't a person to rest one a great deal — but I'm tired of //. I'm perplexed and trou- bled the whole time, and I don't see any end to it. Yes, I wish he would go away' Yes, he is tiresome ! What is he staying here for? If he thinks himself so much better than all of us, I wonder he troubles himself with our company. It's quite time for him to go. No, Fanny, no," cried Kitty, with a little broken laugh, still rejecting the outstretched hand; "I'll be fiat in private, if you please." And dashing her hand across her eyes, she flitted out of the room. At the door, she turned and said, " You needn't think it's what you think it is, Fanny."' " No indeed, dear; you're just overwrought," "For I really v/ish he'd go." 300 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMGR. THE BELLE OF VALLEJO. BY W. L. ALDEN Vallejo, California, possesses a young lady of extraordinary beauty. She is, moreover, as intelligent and bold as she is beau- tiful, and in grappling with a sudden emergency she is probably unequaled by any one of her sex. Naturally, she is the admira- tion of every young man in the town. In fact, she is beyond the reach of rivalry. The other young ladies of Yallejo are per- fectly well aware that it is hopeless for them to enter the lists with her. They never expect to receive calls from marriageable young men except on the off nights of the Vallejo belle, and though they doubtless murmur secretly against this dispensation, they apparently accept it as a law of nature. For two years the beauty in question, whom we will call Miss Ecks, received the homage of her multitudinous admirers, and took an evident delight in adding to their number. So far from selecting any particular young man for front-gate or back-piazza duty, she preferred to entertain one or two dozen simultaneous admirers in the full blaze of the brilliantly lighted front parlor. It is only fair to add that she was an earnest young woman, who despised coquetry and never dreamed of showing favor to one young man in order to exasperate the rest. That so brilliant a girl should have finally selected a meek young minister on whom to lavish her affections was certainly a surprise to all who knew her, and v/hen it was first rumored that she had made such a selection, Vallejo refused to believe it. The minister made his regular nightly calls upon the object of his affections, but an average quantity of eleven other young men never failed to be present. Of course, he could not obtain a single moment of private happiness with his eleven rivals sitting all around the room, unless he made his evening call at a pre- posterously early hour. He did try this expedient once or twice, but the only result was that the eleven admirers at once followed his example. In these circumstances he began to grov/ thin with suppressed affection, and the young lady, alarmed at his condi- tion, made up her mind that something must be done without delay. THE BELLE OF VALLEJO. \o\ About three weeks ago the young minister presented himself in his beloved's front parlor at 6:50 p. m., and, in the ten minutes that elapsed before the first of his rivals rang the bell, he painted the misery of courting by battalions in the most harrowing terms. Miss Ecks listened to him with deep sympathy, and promised him that if he would stay until nine o'clock, the last of the objection- able young men would be so thoroughly disposed of that for the rest of the evening he would have the field to himself. Full of confidence in the determination and resources of his betrothed, his spirits returned, and he was about to express his gratitude with A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE. his lips, as well as his heart, when the first young man was ushered into the room. Miss Ecks received her unwelcome guest with great cordiality, and invited him to sit on a chair the back of which was placed close to a door. The door in question opened outward, and upon the top of a flight of stairs leading to the cellar. The latch was old and out of order, and the least pressure would cause it to fly open. In pursuance of a deep-laid plan, Miss Ecks so molded her conversation as to place the visitor at his ease. In a very few moments, he ceased to twist his fingers and writhe his legs, and presently tilted back his chair after the manner of a con- tented and h?ppy man. No sooner did the back of the chair "'O?. MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR touch the door than the latter flew open, and the unhappy guest disappeared into the cellar with a tremendous crash. Checking the cry that arose from the astonished clergyman, Miss Ecks quietly reclosed the fatal door, placed a fresh chair in its vicinity, and calmly remarked, " That's one of them." In five minutes more the second young man entered. Like his predecessor, he seated himself on the appointed chair, tipped back upon its hind-legs, and instantly vanished. " That's two of them," remarked the imperturbable beauty, as she closed the door and once more re-set the trap. From this time until nine o'clock a constant succession of young men went down those cel- lar stairs. Some of them groaned slightly after reaching the bottom, but not one returned. It was an unusually good night for young men, and Miss Ecks caught no less than fourteen between seven and nine o'clock. As the last one disappeared she turned to her horrified clergyman and said, " That's the last of them! Now for business!" but that mild young man had fainted. His nerves were unable to bear the strain, and when the moment of his wished-for monopoly of his betrothed had arrived he was unable to enjoy it. Later in the evening he revived sufificiently to seek a railway station and fiy forever from his remorseless charmer. The inquest that was subsequently held upon the fourteen young men will long be remembered as a most impressive scene. Miss Ecks was present with her back hair loose, and the tears stood in her magnificent eyes as she testified that she could not imagine what induced the young men to go dov/n cellar. The jury without the slightest hesitation found that they had one and all committed suicide, and the coroner personally thanked the young lady for her lucid testimony. She is now more popular than ever, and, with the loss of her own accepted lover, has renewed her former fondness for society, and nightly entertains all the surviving young men of Vallejo. This shows what the magnificent climate of California can accomplish in the production of girls, when it really tries. KITTY ANSWERS. 303 KITTY ANSWERS. BY W. D. HOWELLS. It was the dimmest twilight when Kitty entered Mrs. Ellison's room and sank down on the first chair in silence. " The colonel met a friend at the St. Louis, and forgot about the expedition, Kitty," said Fanny, "and he only came in half an hour ago. But it's just as well; I knowyou've had a splendid time. Where's Mr. Arbuton ? " Kitty burst into tears. " Why, has anything happened to him 1 " cried Mrs. Ellison, springing towards her. " To him ? No ! What should happen to him ? " Kitty demanded with an indignant accent. "Well, then, has anything happened ioyou?'' " I don't know if you can call it happening. But I suppose you'll be satisfied now, Fanny. He's offered himself to me." Kitty uttered the last words with a sort of violence, as if, since the fact must be stated, she wished it to appear in the sharpest relief. " Oh dear ! " said Mrs. Ellison, not so well satisfied as the suc- cessful match-maker ought to be. So long as it was a marriage in the abstract, she had never ceased to desire it; but as to the actual union of Kitty and this Mr. Arbuton, of whom, really, they knew so little, and oi whom, if she searched her heart, she had as little liking as knowledge, it was another affair. Mrs. Ellison trembled at her triumph, and began to think that failure would have been easier to bear. Were they in the least suited to each other ? Would she like to see poor Kitty chained for life to that impassive egotist, whose very merits were repellent, and whose modesty even seemed to convict and snub you ? Mrs. Ellison was not able to put the matter to herself with moderation, either way; doubtless she did Mr. Arbuton injustice now. " Did you accept him ? " she whispered, feebly. " Accept him ? " repeated Kitty. " No ! " "Oh dear !" agam sighed Mrs. Ellison, feeling that this was scarcely better, and not daring to ask further. 304 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR "I'm dreadfully perplexed, Fanny," said Kitty, after waiting for the questions which did not come, "and I wish you'd help me think." " I will, darling. But I don't know that I'll be of much use. I begin to think I'm not very good at thinking." Kitty, who longed chiefly to get the situation more distinctly before herself, gave no heed to this confession, but went on to rehearse the whole affair. The twilight lent her its veil ; and in the kindly obscurity she gathered courage to face all the facts, and even to find what was droll in them. "It was very solemn, of course, and I was frightened; but I tried to keep my wits about me, and notx.o say yes, simply because that was the easiest thing. I told him that I didn't know — and I don't; and that I must have time to think — and I must. He was very ungenerous, and said he had hoped I had already had time to think; and he couldn't seem to understand, or else I couldn't very well explain, how it had been with me all along." " He might certainly say you had encouraged him," Mrs. Ellison remarked, thoughtfully. " Encouraged him, Fanny ? How can you accuse me of such indelicacy ? " "Encouraging isn't indelicacy. The gentlemen have to be encouraged, or of course they'd never have any courage. They're so timid, naturally." " I don't think Mr. Arbuton is very timid. He seemed to thmk that he had only to ask as a matter of form, and I had no business to say anything. What has he ever done for me ? And hasn't he often been intensely disagreeable'? He oughtn't to have spoken just after overhearing what he did. It was horrid to do so. He was very obtuse, too, not to see that girls can't always be so certain of themselves as men, or, if they are, don't know they are as soon as they're asked." "Yes," interrupted Mrs. Ellison, " that's the way with girls. I do believe that most of them — when they're young like you, Kitty — never think of marriage as the end of their flirtations. They'd just like the attentions and the romance to go on forever, and never turn into anything more serious; and they're not to blame for that, though they do get blamed for it." " Certainly," assented Kitty, eagerh% "that's it; that's just what I was saying; that's the very reason why girls must have time to make up their minds. You had, I suppose." KITTY ANSWERS. y^c " Yes, two minutes. Poor Dick was going back to his regi- ment, and stood with his watch in his hand. I said no, and called after him to correct myself. But, Kitty, if the romance had happened to stop without his saying anything, you wouldn't have liked that either, would you ? " " No," faltered Kitty, " I suppose not." " Well, then, don't you see ? That's a great point in his favor. How much time did you want, or did he give you ? " " I said I should answer before we left Quebec," answered Kitty, with a heavy sigh. " Don't you know what to say now ?" " I can't tell. That's what I want you to help me think out." Mrs. Ellison was silent for a moment before she said, " Well, then, I suppose we shall have to go back to the very beginning." " Yes," assented Kitty, faintly. "You did have a sort of fancy for him the first time you saw him, didn't you ? " asked Mrs. Ellison, coaxingly, while forcing herself to be systematic and coherent, by a mental strain of which no idea can be given. "Yes," said Kitty, yet more faintly; adding, "but I can't tell just what sort of a fancy it was. I suppose I admired him for being handsome and stylish, and for having such exquisite man- ners." " Go on," said Mrs. Ellison. "And after you got acquainted with him? " " Why, you know we've talked that over once already, Fanny." " Yes, but we oughtn't to skip anything now," replied Mrs. Ellison, in a tone of judicial accuracy which made Kitty smile. But she quickly became serious again, and said, "Afterwards I couldn't tell whether to like him or not, or whether he wanted me to. I think he acted very strangely for a person in— love. I used to feel so troubled and oppressed when I was with him. He seemed always to be making himself agreeable under pro- test." " Perhaps that was just your imagination, Kitty." " Perhaps it was; but it troubled me just the same." "Well, and then?" " Well, and then after that day of the Montgomery expedition, he seemed to change altogether, and to try always to be pleasant, and to do everything he could to make me like him. I don't ;o6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. know how to account for it. Ever since then he's been extremely careful of me, and behaved — of course without knowing it — as if I belonged to him already. Or may be I've imagined that too. It's very hard to tell what has really happened the last two weeks." Kitty was silent, and Mrs. Ellison did not speak at once. Presently she asked, " Was his acting as if you belonged to him disagreeable ? " " I can't tell. I think it was rather presuming. I don't know why he did it." "Do you respect him?" demanded Mrs. Ellison. " Why, Fanny, I've always told you that I did respect some things in him." Mrs. Ellison had the facts be- fore her, and it rested upon her to sum them up, and do s o m e - thing with them. She rose to a ,';;(] sitting posture, and confronted her task. "Well, Kitty, I'll tell you: I don't really know what to think. But I can say this: if you liked him at first, and then didn't like him, and afterwards he made himself more agreeable, and you didn't mind his behaving as if you belonged to him, and you respected him, but after all didn't think him fascinating — " ♦' He is fascinating — in a kind of way. He was, from the beginning. In a story his cold, snubbing, putting-down ways would have been perfectly fascinating." " Then why didn't you take him ? " "• Because," answered Kitty, between laughing and crying, "it isn t a story, and I don't know whether I like him." " But do you think you might get to like him ? " ** I don't know. His asking brings back all the doubts I ever ♦•KITTY GLIDED OUT OF THE ROOM. KITTY ANSWERS. -iq? had of him, and that I've been forgetting the past two weeks. I can't tell whether I like him or not. If I did, shouldn't I trust him more ? " " Well, whether you are in love or not, I'll tell you what you are, Kitty," cried Mrs, Ellison, provoked with her indecision, and yet relieved that the worst, whatever it was, was postponed thereby for a day or two. "What?" "You're—" But at this important juncture the colonel came lounging in, and Kitty glided out of the room. " Richard," said Mrs. Ellison, seriously, and in a tone imply- ing that it was the colonel's fault, as usual, "you know what has happened, I suppose." " No, my dear, I don't; but no matter: I will presently, I dare say." " Oh, I wish for once, you wouldn't be so flippant. Mr. Arbuton has offered himself to Kitty." Colonel Ellison gave a quick, sharp whistle of amazement, but trusted himself to nothing more articulate. " Yes," said his wife, responding to the whistle, " and it makes me perfectly wretched." " Why, I thought you liked him." " I didn't liJze him; but I thought it would bean excellent thing for Kitty." "And won't it?" " She doesn't know." "No'" The colonel was silent, while Mrs. Ellison stated the case in full, and its pending uncertainty. Then he exclaimed vehe- mently, as if his amazement had been growing upon him, " This is the most astonishing thing in the world ! Who would ever have dreamt of that young iceberg being in love ? " " Haven't I told vou all along he was ? " "Oh, yes, certainly; but that might be taken either way, you Jcnow. You would discover the tender passion in the eye of a potato." "Colonel Ellison," said Fanny, with sternness, "why do you suppose he's been hanging about us for the last four weeks ? Why should he have stayed in Quebec ? Do you think he pitied me. or found ynu so agreeable ? " 3o8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR, " Well, I thought he found us just tolerable, and was interested in the place." Mrs. Ellison made no direct reply to this pitiable speech, but looked a scorn which, happily for the colonel, the darkness hid. Presently she said that bats did not express the blindness of men, for any bat could have seen what was going on. "Why," remarked the colonel, " I did have a momentary sus- picion that day of the Montgomery business; they both looked very confused when I saw them at the end of that street, and neither of them had anything to say; but that was accounted for by what you told me afterwards about his adventure. At the time I didn't pay much attention to the matter. The idea of his being in love seemed too ridiculous." " Was it ridiculous for you to be in love with me ? " "No; and yet I can't praise my condition for its wisdom, Fanny." " Yes ! that's like men. As soon as one of them is safely married, he thinks all the love-making in the world has been done forever, and he can't conceive of two young people taking a fancy to each other." " That's something so, Fanny. But grantmg — for the sake of argument merely — that Boston has been asking Kitty to marry him, and she doesn't know whether she wants him, what are we to do about it ? /don't like him well enough to plead his cause; do you ? When does Kitty think she'll be able to make up her mind?" " She's to let him know before we leave." The colonel laughed. " And so he's to hang about here on uncertainties for two whole days ! That is rather rough on him. Fanny, what made you so eager for this business ? " " Eager ? 1 7cias?i' Meager." "Well, then — reluctantly acquiescent?" " Why, she's so literary, and that." "And what?" " How msulting! Intellectual, and so on; and I thought she would be just fi^ to live in a place where everybody is literary and intellectual. That is, I thought that, if I thought anything." "Well," said the colonel, "you may have been right on the whole, but I don't think Kitty is showing any particular force of mind, just now, that would fit her to live in Boston. My opinion KITTY ANSWERS. ^OO is, that it's ridiculous for her to keep him in suspense. She might as well answer him first as last. She's putting herself under a kind of obligation by her delay. I'll talk to her — " " If you do, you'll kill her. You don't know how she's wrought up about it." " Oh, well, I'll be careful of her sensibilities. It's my duty to speak with her. I'm here in the place of a parent. Besides, don't I know Kitty ? I've almost brought her up." " Maybe you're right. You're all so queer that perhaps you're right. Only, do be careful, Richard. You must approach the matter very delicately— indirectly, you know. Girls are different, remember, from young men, and you mustn't be blunt. Do manoeuvre a little, for once in your life." "All right, Fanny; you needn't be afraid of my doing anything awkward or sudden. I'll go to her room pretty soon, after she is quieted down, and have a good, calm old fatherly conversation with her." The colonel was spared this errand; for Kitty had left some of her things on Fanny's table, and now came back for them with a lamp in her hand. Her averted face showed the marks of weep- ing; the corners of her firm-set lips were downward bent, as if some resolution which she had taken was very painful. This the anxious Fanny saw; and she made a gesture to the colonel which any woman would have understood to enjoin silence, or, at least, the utmost caution and tenderness of speech. The colonel summoned \x\?> finesse and said, cheerily, "Well, Kitty, what's Boston been saying to you ? " Mrs. Ellison fell back upon her sofa as if shot, and placed her hand over her face. Kitty seemed not to hear her cousin. Having gathered up her things, she bent an unmoved face and an unseeing gaze full upon him, and glided from the room without a word. "Well, upon my soul," cried the colonel, " this is a pleasant, nightmarish, sleep-walking, Lady-Macbethish little transaction. Confound it, Fanny! this comes of your wanting me to manoeu- vre: if you'd let me come straight at the subject — like a man — " '■'■ Please, Richard, don't say anything more now," pleaded Mrs. Ellison in a broken voice. "You can't help it, I know; and I must do the best I can under the circumstances. Do go av/ay for a little while, darling! Oh, dear! " 3 lO MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. As for Kitty, when she had got out of the room in that phan- tasmal fashion, she dimly recalled, through the mists of her own trouble, the colonel's dismay at her so glooming upon him, and began to think that she had used poor Dick more tragically than she need, and so began to laugh softly to herself ; but while she stood there at the entry window a moment, laughing in the moon- light, that made her lamp-flame thin, and painted her face with its pale lustre, Mr. Arbuton came down the attic stairway. He was not a man of quick fancies ; but to one of even slower imag- inations and of calmer mood, she might very well have seemed unreal, the creature of a dream, fantastic, intangible, insensible, arch, not wholly without some touch of the malign. In his heart he groaned over her beauty as if she were lost to him forever in this elfish transfiguration. " Miss Ellison ! " he scarcely more than whispered. " You ought not to speak to me now," she answered, gravely. " I know it ; but I could not help it. For heaven's sake, do not let it tell against me. I wished to ask, if I should not see you to-morrow, to beg that all might go on as had been plan- ned, and as if nothing had been said to-day." " It'll be very strange," said Kitty. " My cousins know every- thing now. How can we meet before them ? " " I'm not going away without an answer, and we can't remain here without meeting. It will be less strange if we let everything take its course." "Well." "Thanks." He looked strangely humbled, but even more bewildered than humbled. She listened while he descended the steps, unbolted the street door, and closed it behind him. Then she passed out of the moonlight into her own room, whose close-curtained space the lamp filled with i'ss ruddy glow, and revealed her again, no malicious sprite, but a very puzzled, conscientious, anxious young girl. FO UR TH OF JUL V ORA TION. nw FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. Delivered July 4TH, at Weathersfield, Connecticut, 1859. BY ARTEMUS WARD [I delivered thefollerin, about two years ago, to a large and discriminating awjince. I was 96 minits passin' a i^iven pint. I have revised the orashun, and added sum things which makes it approposser to the times than it other- wise would be. I have also corrected the grammars and punktooated it. I do my own punktooatin nowdajs. The Printers in Vanity Fair oftiss can't punktooate worth a cent.] Feller Citizens : I've been honored with a invite to norate before you to-day ; and vt'hen I say that I skurcely feel ekal to the task, I'm sure you will believe me. Weathersfield is justly celebrated for her onyins and patritism the world over, and to be axed to paws and address you on this my fust perfeshernal tower threw New England, causes me to feel — to feel — I may say it causes me to fed. (Grate applaws. They thought this was one of my eccentricities, while the fact is I was stuck. This between you and I.) I'm a plane man. I don't knownothin' about no ded languages and am a little shaky on livin' ones. There4, expect no flowry talk from me. What I shall say will be to the pint, right strate out. I'm not a politician, and my other habits air good. I've no enemys to reward, nor friends to sponge. But I'm a Union man, I luv the Union — it is a Big thing — and it makes my hart bleed to see a lot of ornery peple a-movin' heaven — no, not heaven, but the other place — and earth, to bust it up. Too much good blud was spilt in courtin' and marryin' that hily respectable female, the Goddess of Liberty, to git a divorce from her now. My own State of Injianny is celebrated for unhitchin' marrid peple with neatness and despatch, but you can't git a divorce from the Goddess up there. Not by no means. The old gal has behaved herself too well to cast her off now. I'm sorry the picters don't give her no shoes or stockins, but the band of stars upon her hed must continner to shine undimd, forever. I'm for the Union as she air^ and withered be the arm of every ornery cuss who 312 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. attempts to bust her up. That's me. I hav sed ! [It was a ver5r sweaty day, and at this pint of the orashun a man fell down with sunstroke. I told the awjince that considerin' the large number of putty gals present I was more afraid of a dawter stroke. This was impromptoo, and seemed to amoose them very much.] Feller Citizens — I hain't got time to notis the growth of Ameriky frum the time when the May- flowers cum over in the Pilgrim and bra w t Plymmuth Rock with them, but every skool boy nose our kareer has bin tremenjis. You will excuse me if I don't praise the early set- tlers of the Kolonies. Peple which hung idiotic old wimin for witches, burnt holes in Quakers' tongues and consined their feller critters to the tredmill and pillery on the slitest provo- cashun may have bin very nice folks in their way, but I must confess I don't ad- mire their stile, and will pass them by. I spose they ment well, and so, in the novel and techin lan- gwidge of the nusepapers, " peas to their ashis." Thare \yas no diskount, however, on them brave men who fit, bled and died in the American Revolushun. We needn't be afraid of setting 'em up two steep. Like my show, they will stand any amount of prase. G. Washington was abowt the best man this world ever AN OLD TIME CELEBRATION. FO UR TH OF JULY OR A TION. ^ I ^ sot eyes on. He was a clear-heded, warm-harted, and stiddy- goin' man. He never slopt over ! The prevalin weakness of most public men is to SLOP OVER ! [Put them words in large letters — A. W.] They git filled up and slop. They Rush Things. They travel too much on the high presher principle. They git on to the fust poplar hobbyhoss whitch trots along, not carin' a sent wriether the beest is even-goin', clear sited and sound, or spavined, blind and bawky. Of course they git throwed event- ooally, if not sooner. When they see the multitood goin' it blind they go Pel Mel with it, instid of exertin' theirselves to set it right. They can't see that the crowd which is now bearin' them triumfantly on its shoulders will soon diskiver its error and cast them into the hoss pond of Oblivyun, without the slitest hesi- tashun. Washmgton never slopt over. That wasn't George's stile. He luved his country dearly. He wasn't after the spiles. He was a iiuman angil in a 3 kornered hat and knee britches^ and we sha'n't see his like right away. My friends, we can't all be Washington's, but we km all be patrits & behave ourselves in a human and a Christian manner. When we see a brother goin' downhill to Ruin let us not give him a push, but let us seeze rite hold of his coat-tails and draw him back to Morality. Imagine G. Washington and P. Henry in the character of seseshers I As well fancy John Bunyan and Dr. Watts in spangled tites, doin the trapeze in a one-horse circus ! I tell you, feller-citizens, it would have been ten dollars in Jeff Davis's pocket if he'd never bin born ! * * * * * * * Be shure and vote at leest once at all eleckshuns. Buckle on yer armer and go to the Poles. See two it that your naber is there. See that the kripples air provided with carriages. Go to the Poles and stay all day. Bewair of the infamous lies whitch the Opposishun will be sartin to git up fur perlitical effek on the eve of eleckshun. To the Poles ! and when you git there vote jest as you darn please. This is a privilege we all persess, and it is I of the booties of this grate and free land. I see mutch to admire in New Englan'. Your gals in jDarticklar air abowt as snug bilt peaces of Calliker as I ever saw. They air fully equal to the corn fed gals of Ohio and Injianny, and will make the bestest kind of wives. It sets my Buzzum on fire to look at 'em. 314 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR. Be still, my sole, be still, & you, Hart, stop cuttin up ! I like your school houses, your meetin' houses, your enter- prise, gumpshun &c., but your favorite Bevridge I disgust. I allude to New England Rum. It is wuss nor the korn whisky of Injianny, which eats threw stone jugs & will turn the stum- muck of the most shiftliss Hog. I seldom seek consolashun in the flowin Bole, but t'other day I wurrid down some of your Rum. The fust glass indused me to swear like a infooriated trooper. On takin' the secund glass I was seezed with a desire to break winders, & arter imbibin' the third glass I knockt a small boy down, pickt his pocket of a Nczo York Ledger, and wildly commenced readin* Sylvanus Kobb's last Tail. It's dreadful stuff — a sort of lickwid litenin, gut up under the personal supervishun of the devil — tears men's inards all to peaces and makes their noses blossum as the Lobster. Shun it as you would a wild hyeny with a fire- brand tied to his tale, and while you air abowt it you will do a first-rate thing for yourself and everybody abowt you by shunnin all kinds of intoxicatin lickers. You don't n:,ed 'em no more'n a cat needs 2 tales, sayin' nothin' abowt the trubble and sufferin' they cawse. But unless your inards air cast-iron, avoid New Englan's favorite Bevridge. My friends, I'm dun. I tear myself away from you with tears in my eyes & a pleasant odor of Onyins abowt my close. In the langwidge of Mister Catterline to the Rummuns, I go, but perhaps I shall cum back agin. Adoo, peple of Weathersfield. Be virtoous & you'll be happy THE PARSON'S HORSE-RACE. 3 i r THE PARSON'S HORSE-RACE. BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. P^ARRIET BEECHER STOWE, the author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," the i most famous novel ever written, and of other works of world-wide celeb- rity, was born at Litchfield, Conn., in 1812. She was married in her twenty- first year to Calvin E. Stowe, and removed from Hartford to Cincinnati, where she wrote her first books, and gatbeied the material for her great work. She has, since 1S50, lived in the East, and now divides her year between Hartford and Florida. "Oldtown Fireside Stories " is ©ne of several volumes of New England sketches. "Wal, now, this 'ere does beat all! I wouldn't 'a' thought it o' the deacon." So spoke Sam Lavvson, drooping in a discouraged, contempla- tive attitude in front of an eq_ually discouraged looking horse, that had just been brought to him by the Widow Simpkins for medical treatm.ent. Among Sam's many accomplishments, he was reckoned in the neighborhood an oracle in all matters of this kind, especially by women, whose helplessness in meeting such emergencies found unfailing solace under his compassionate willingness to attend to any business that did not strictly belong to him, and from which no pecuniary return was to be expected. The Widow Simpkins had bought this horse of Deacon Atkins, apparently a fairly well-appointed brute, and capable as he was good-looking. A short, easy drive, when the Deacon held the reins, had shown off his points to advantage; and the widow's small stock of ready savings had come forth freely in payment for what she thought was a bargain. When, soon after coming into possession, she discovered that her horse, if driven with any haste, panted in a fearful manner, and that he appeared to be growing lam. 3, she waxed wroth, and went to the Deacon in anger, to be met only with the smooth reminder that the animal was all right when she took him; that she had seen him tried herself. The widow was of a nature somewhat spicy, and expressed her- self warmly: "It's a cheat and a shame, and I'll take the law on ye !" " What law will you take ?" said the unmoved Deacon. <' Wasn't it a fair bargain ? " 3i6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. "■ I'll take the law of God," said the widow, with /mpoten.t indignation; and she departed to pour her cares and trials into the ever ready ear of Sam. Having assumed the care of the animal, he now sat contemplating it in a sort of trance of melan- choly reflection. " Why, boys," he broke out, "why didn't she come to me afore she bought this crittur? Why, I knew all about hirn ! That 'ere crittur was jest ruined a year ago last summer, when Tom, the Dea- con's boy there, come home from college. Tom driv him ever to Sherburn and back that 'ere hot Fourth of July. 'Member it, 'cause I saw the crittur when he come home. I sot up wuth Tom takin' care of him all night. That 'ere crittur had the thumps all night, and he hain't never been good for nothin' since. I felled the Deacon he was a gone hoss then, and wouldn't never be good for nothin'. The Deacon, he took off his shoes, and let him run to pastur' all sum- mer, and he's ben a-feedin' and nussin' on him up ; and now he's put him off on the widder. I wouldn't 'a' thought it o' the Dea- con! Wh)', this hoss' 11 never be no good to her ! That 'ere's a used-up crittur, any fool may see ! He'll mabbe do for about a quarter of an hour on a smooth road; but come to drive him as a body wants to drive, why, he blows like my bellowsis ; and the Deacon knew it — must 'a' known it !" "Why, Sam!" we exclaimed, " ain't the Deacon a good man?" " Wal, now, there's where the shoe pinches! In a gin'al way the Deacon t's a good man — he's consid'able more than middlin' good; gin'ally he adorns his perfession. On most p'ints I don't SA.M LAWSON. THE PARSON'S HORSE-RACE. 17 hevnothin' agin the Deacon; and this 'ere ain't a bit like him. But there 'tis! Come to hosses, there's where the unsanctified natur' comes out. Folks will cheat about hosses when they won't about 'most nothin' else." And Sam leaned back on his cold forge, now empty of coal, and seemed to deliver himself to a mournful train of general reflection. "Yes, hosses does seem to be sort o' unregenerate critturs," he broke out: "there's suthin about hosses that deceives the very elect. The best o* folks gets tripped up when they come to deal in hosses." " Why, Sam, is there anything bad in horses ? " we interjected timidly. "'Tain't the hosses," said Sam with solemnity. " Lordy massy! the hosses is all right enough! Hosses is scriptural ani- mals. Elijah went up to heaven in a chari't with hosses, and then all them lots o' hosses m the Ravelations — black and white and red, and all sorts o' colors. That 'ere shows hosses goes to heaven; but it's more'n the folks that hev 'em is likely to, ef they don't look out. " Ministers, now," continued Sam, in a soliloquizing vein — " folks allers thinks it's suthin' sort o' shaky in a minister to hev much to do with hosses — sure to get 'em into trouble. There was old Parson Williams of North Billriky got into a drefful mess about a hoss. Lordy massy! he wern't to blame, neither; but he got into the dreffulest scrape you ever heard on — come nigh to unsettlin' him." " O Sam, tell us all about it!" we boys shouted, delighted with the prospect of a story. '• Wal, wait now till I get off this crittur's shoes, and we'll take him up to pastur', and then we can kind o' set by the river, and fish. Hepsy wanted a mess o' fish for supper, and I was cal'latin' to git some for her. You boys go and be digging bait, and git yer lines." And so, as we were sitting tranquilly beside the Charles River, watching our lines, Sam's narrative began: "Ye see, boys, Parson Williams — he's dead now, but when I was a boy be was one of the gret men round here. He writ books. He writ a tract agin the Armenians, and put 'em down ; and he writ a big book on the millennium (I've got that 'ere book now); and he was a smart preacher. Folks said he had invita- tions to settle in Boston, and there ain't no doubt he might 'a' 3 1 8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR. hed a Boston parish ef he'd 'a' ben a mind ter take it ; but he'd got a good settlement and a handsome farm in North Billriky, and didn't care to move ; thought, I s'pose, that 'twas better to be number one in a little place than number two in a big un. Anyway, he carried all before him where he was. "Parson Williams was a tall, straight, personable man ; come ot" good family — father and grand'ther before him all ministers. He was putty up and down, and commandin' in his ways, and things had to go putty much as he said. He was a good deal sot by. Parson Williams was, and his wife was a Derby — one o' them rich Salem Derbys — and brought him a lot o' money ; and so they lived putty easy and comfortable so fur as this world's goods goes. Well, now, the parson wa'n't reely what you call worldly-minded ; but then he was one o' them folks that knaivs uihafs goodxw temporals as well as sperituals, and allers liked to hev the best that there was goin' ; and he allers had an eye to a good boss. " Now, there was Parson Adams and Parson Scranton, and most of the other ministers : they didn't know and didn't care what hoss they hed ; jest jogged round with these 'ere poundin', potbellied, sleepy critturs that ministers mostly hes — good enough to crawl around to funerals and mmisters' meetin's and 'socia- tions and sich ; but Parson Williams, he allers would hev a hoss as was a hoss. He looked out for blood ; and, when these 'ere Vermont fellers would come down with a drove, the parson he hed his eyes open, and knew what was what. Couldn't none of 'em cheat him on hoss flesh! And so one time when Zach Buel was down with a drove, the doctor he bought the best hoss in the lot. Zach said he never see a parson afore that he couldn't cheat \ but he said the doctor reely knew as much as he did, and got the very one he'd meant to 'a' kept for himself. " This 'ere hoss was a peeler, I'll tell you ! They'd called him Tamerlane, from some heathen feller or other : the boys calied him Tam, for short. Tam was a great character. All the fellers for miles round knew the doctor's Tam, and used to come clear over from the other parishes to see him. " Wal, this 'ere sot up Cuff's back high, I tell you / Cuft was the doctor's nigger man, and he was nat'lly a drefful proud crit- tur. The way he would swell and strut and brag about the doctor and his folks and his things ! The doctor used to give THE PARSON'S HORSE-RACE. 319 Cuff his cast-off clothes : and Cuff would prance round in 'em, and seem to think he was a doctor of divinity himself, and had the charge of all natur'. " Well, Cuff he reely made an idol o' that 'ere hoss — a reg'lar graven image — and bowed down and worshiped him. Ke didn't think nothin' was too good for him. He washed and brushed and curried him, and rubbed him down till he shone like a lady's satin dress ; and he took pride in ridin' and drivin' him, 'cause it was what the doctor wouldn't let nobody else do but himself, You see, Tam wern't no lady's hoss. Miss Williams was 'fraid as death of him ; and the parson he hed to git her a sort o' low-sperited crittur that she could drive herself. But he liked to drive Tarn ; and he liked to go round the country on his back, and a fine figure of a man he was on him, too. He didn't let nobody else back him or handle the reins but Cuff ; and Cuff was drefful set up about it, and he swelled and bragged about that ar hoss all round the country. Nobody couldn't put in a word 'bout any other hoss, without Cuff's feathers would be all up stiff as a tom- turkey's tail ; and that's how Cuff got the doctor into trouble. " Ye see, there nat'lly was others that thought they'd got horses, and didn't want to be crowed over. There was Bill Atkins, out to the west parish, and Ike Sanders, that kep' a stable up to Pequot Holler : they was down a-lookin' at the parson's hoss, and a-bettin* on their'n, and a darin' Cuff to race with 'em. " VVal, Cuff, he couldn't stan' it, and, when the doctor's back was turned, he'd be off on the sly, and they'd hev their race ; and Tam he beat 'em all. Tam, ye see, boys, was a hoss that couldn't and wouldn't hev a hoss ahead of him — he jest ivouldnt! Ef he dropped down dead in his tracks the next minit, he woula be ahead ; and he allers got ahead. And so his name got up, and fellers kep' comin' to try their horses : and Cuff'd take Tam CUFF. L- 320 MARK' THJ.V'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. out to race with \ast oj and then another till this 'ere got to be a reg'lar thin^j, and In-in to be talked about. ••Folks sort o' worn red if the doctor knew; but Cuff was sly as a weasel, and allcriiad a story ready for every turn. Cuff was one of them felk 1 that could talk a bird off a bush— master hand he was to slick 1 ngs over! " There was folks .1 .aid they believed the doctor was knowin' to it, and that he fcl a sort o" carnal pride sech as a minister oughtn't fer to hcv, . J so shet his eyes to what wasa-goin' on. Aunt' Sally Niclrson said she was sure on't. 'Twas all talked over down ti) Id Miss Bummigcr's funeral, and Aunt Sally she said the chrh ought to look into't. But everybody knew Aunt Sally: sh(vasallers watchin' for folks' hallin's, and scliin' on herself up t jedge her neighbors. "Wal, I never beliL-d nothin' agin Parson Williams: it was all Cuff's contrivance But the fact was, the fellers all got their blood up, and there us hoss-racin* in all the jxirishes; and it got so they'd even rat bosses a Sunday. " Wal, of course t! / never got the doctors boss out a Sun- day. Cuff wouldn't durst to do that, Lordy massy, no! He was allers there in lurch, settin' up in the doctor's clothes, rollin' up his eyes, an lookin' as pious as ef he never thought o' racin' bosses. He w; an awful solemn-lookin' nigger in church, Cuff was. "But there was ate' them fellers up to Pcquot H(V Bill Atkins, and Ike nders.at ' 1 Peters, and them H boys — used to go (' bosses. Ye see, it s'lectmen was to c^ the line, and they C( 1 . ; "Wal, it got to br gre:. it up to the tavern; ad the took it up and went t Parson he told 'em jest to k*p still, was bein' watched, ail next the constable, they'd ide over, " So next Sunday irternoon Popkins and Ben Briley (he w; on to their bosses, an rode over to blood was up, and h meant to co ly arternoon, am .State-line, an*! could jest \s ■ u I ■! THE PARSON'S JiRSE KACE. *** 32T tnat was his way o' doin' in his parii. Ami (lu-y was m ,i .s,m( o' day-o'-jedgment frame o' mind, ail jogi^oil aloiiiv soKmuh as a hearse, till, come to rise the hill abio the holit r, thoy sor iliroe or four fellers with their hosses gitn' ready ti) rarr; ai\il ilu- parson says he, 'Let's come on Cjiot, and get iHluiul ilu>,sc bushes, and we'll see what they're ujo, and catch 'onun ilicact.' ''But the mischief on't was, that ;c Sanders sec 'cm comiii,' and he knowed Tam in a minit — Ik knowcd Tarn ol old .md he jest tipped the wink to the rest. ' Wait, boys,' says he: 'let 'em git close up, and then I'll givii.he word, and ilic dot-lor's hoss will be racin' ahead like thund( ' "Wal, sothe doctor and his follv they drew np Ik limd ihr bushes, and stood there innocent as mid be, and saw 'cm j^iiini' ready to start. Tam, he begun to si (fle and paw, biil the doc- tor never mistrusted what he was up > till Ike sung oui, ' (,0 il, boys!' and the hosses all started, w:n, sure as you live, boyn! Tam give one fly, and was over the ushes, and in ani<;iig 'cni, goin' it like chain-lightnin' ahead of m all. " Deacon Popkins and Ben Bradk jest stood and Ix-ld llicir bren^' " > see 'em all goin' it so like uinder; and the do(.lor, Ik; ^^> sudden it was all he con i\i) to jest hold r;n aiiy- y he went, and trees ai;f :;Jics and fenccH utrcakcd )binb. His halCffi'^c I;chind him, and hJH wij( Itched in a 1 |J Ji; but l>>rdy tnanny! he jest leaned down, and :i for dear life til) they :'>urc enoij;;-/, .uA wa* ry o!d l/oy in him, «nd fellcf thitt ever 'ItifXfjx. *ys, when ministers must be templed to swear, if there ain't preventin" grace, and this was one o' tliem times to Parson Will- iams. They say he got red in the face, and looked as if he ■n, COMINr. IN AHEAD. shoold bast, but he didn't say nolhin' : he scorned to answer. The sons o* Zeruiah was too hard for him, and he let 'em hcv their say. But when they'd got through, and Ben had brought him his hat and wig, and brnshed and settled him ag'in, the par- THE PARSON'S HORSE-RACE. 3^3 son he says, 'Well, boys, ye've had your say and your laugh; but I warn you now I won't have this thing goin' on here any more,' says he ; 'so mind yourselves.' " Wal, the boys see that the doctor's blood was up, and they rode off pretty quiet; and I believe they never raced no more in that spot. " But there ain't no tellin' the talk this 'ere thing made. Folks will talk, you know; and there wer'n't a house in all Bill- riky, nor in the south parish nor centre, where it wer'n't had over and discussed. There was the deacon, and Ben Bradley was there, to witness and show jest how the thing was, and that the doctor was jest in the way of his duty; but folks said it made a great scandal; that a minister hadn't no business to hevthat kind o' boss, and that he'd give the enemy occasion to speak reproach- fully. It reely did seem as if Tarn's sins was imputed to the doctor; and folks said he ought to sell Tarn right away, and get a sober minister's boss. " But others said it was Cuff that had got Tarn into bad ways; and they do say that Cuff bad to catch it pretty lively when the doctor come to settle with him. Cuff thought his time had come, sure enough, and was so scairt that he turned blacker'n ever: he got enough to cure him o' hoss-racin' for one while. But Cuff got over it arter a while, and so did the doctor. Lordy massy ! there ain't nothin' lasts forever! Wait long enough, and 'most every thing blows over. So it turned out about the doctor. There was a rumpus and a fuss, and folks talked and talked, and advised; everybody had their say: but the doctor kep' right straight on, and kep' his boss all the same. "The ministers, they took it up in the 'sociation; but^ come to tell the story, it sot 'em all a-laughin', so they couldn't be very hard on the doctor. " The doctor felt sort o' streaked at fust when they told the story on him; he didn't jest like it: but he got used to it, and finally, when he was twitted on't, he'd sort o' smile, and say, 'Anyway, Tarn beat 'em: that's one comfort.' " J 24 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAR Y OF HUMOR. WRECKED IN PORT. BY R. J. BURDETTE. As you go to Boston and Hartford by way of the Boston and Albany Railroad, if you take the morning express there are two parlor cars thereunto attached, with all the appurtenances there- unto appertaining, including a porter with a wisp broom in one hand and a place for a quarter in the other. Now these two par- lor cars are twins, differing only, as in the case with twins, in their manners. The last time I went out that way, one of these cars was " Governor Hawley," and the other was " 'Tother Gov'- nor," I don't remember who. All went well until we reached Springfield. There the usual halt of five or ten minutes was made, the parlor car for Albany was switched off to its proper train, and we went thundering on to Hartford. Before we were well out of the depot an old gentleman con- fronted me. Round faced, well dressed, quick spoken, a little crusty, and a general air of authority about him. "Young man," he said, sharply, "out of that !" " Out of which ?" I said, in innocent surprise. " Out of that chair !" snapped the old party. " Come, be lively; I want to sit down." I was puzzled and annoyed, and stammered something about this being a parlor car and — "Yes, yes," he said impatiently, " I know all about that; this is a parlor car, and you've got my seat. Get up and get out of it now without any more words. Get a seat of your own some- where, and don't go around appropriating other people's chairs when they've gone for lunch. Get out, young fellow !" I am naturally a very meek man, but I did make one more desperate effort to retain ray seat. I said I had occupied that seat—" " Ever since I got out of it at Springfield," snarled the old man. " I rode in that seat all the way from Boston, and the minute I left it you jumped into it. And now you jump out of it, and no more words about it, or I'll make the car full of trouble for you." I '% I I II A PLEASURE EXERTION. 32 V A PLEASURE EXERTION. BY MARIETTA HOLLEY. (T) ARIETTA HOLLEY was born in Jefferson County, N. Y., in 1844. She ^^ has written a number of books, sketches, etc., under the pen name of •'Josiah Allen's Wife," which include "My Opinions and Betsy Bobbett's," "Josiah Allen's Wife, as P. A. and P. L" (1877), " Sweet Cicely " (1887), and a volume of "Poems" (1888). Wal, the very next mornin' Josiah got up with a new idee in his head. And he broached it to me to the breakfast-table. They have been havin' sights of pleasure exertions here to Jonesville lately. Every week a'most they would go off on a exertion after pleasure, and Josiah was all up on end to go too. That man is a well-principled man as I ever see, but if he had his head, he would be worse than any young man I ever see to foller up picnics and 4th of Julys and camp-meetin's and all pleasure exertions. But 1 don't encourage him in it. I have said to him time and i'^ again: "There is a time for everything, Josiah Allen, and after anybody has lost all their teeth and every mite of hair on the top of their head, it is time for 'em to stop goin' to pleasure exertions." But good land ! I might jest as well talk to the wind I If that man should get to be as old as Mr. Methusler, and be goin' on a thousand years old, h< would prick up his ears if he should hear of a exertion. Al. JOSIAH. 326 MA RK TWAIN ' S LIBRA RY OF HUMOR. " Wrong train," he said, brusquely. " Get off at next station. This train for Hartford and New Yorl<." The old gentleman's face was a study. *' For Ha-Ha- wha-what!" he shouted. " I know better! Told me at Boston this car went through to Albany." " Le'me see parlor car ticket," said the conductor, briefly. " Yes, that's all right, you're on wrong car; this ticket for the other car. Your baggage half way t' Albany by this time. Get off at Hartford." " Well, when can I get a train back to Springfield ?" wailed the jumper of chairs. *' T'-night," said the conductor, and passed on to the next car. Then I arose. I gathered up in my weak and long-suffering arms my hat, overcoat, lap-tablet, newspapers, book, big valise, little valise and arctics, and walked back to that chair and stood before the most crest-fallen man the immortal gods ever pitied. I didn't say anything; I didn't make a gesture; I just stood up before him, holding my goods, personal effects and railway chat- tels in my arms and looked at him. He arose and vamoosed the claim. And as I settled down in my recovered possession I made only one remark. I said to the poor old gentleman: " I told you you'd be sorry if you took this chair !" And he marched back and took a seat on the upholstered bench, to the merry laughter of the happy passengers. And the last time I looked around, oh crowning woe, the conductor was making him pay a quarter for his seat in the parlor car. A PLEASURE EXERTION. 327 A PLEASURE EXERTION. BY MARIETTA HOLLEY. (T) ARIETTA HOLLEY was born in Jefferson County, N. Y., in 1844. She ^^ has written a number of books, sketches, etc., under the pen name of •'Josiah Allen's V/ife," which include "My Opinions and Betsy Bobbett's," " Josiah Allen's Wife, as P. A. and P. L" (1877), "Sweet Cicely " (1887), and a volume of "Poems" (1888). Wal, the very next mornin' Josiah got up with a new idee in his head. And he broached it to me to the breakfast-table. They have been havin' sights of pleasure exertions here to Jonesville lately. Every week a'most they would go off on a exertion after pleasure, and Josiah was all up on end to go too. That man is a well-principled man as I ever see, but if he had his head, he would be worse than any young man I ever see to foUer up picnics and 4th of Julys and camp-meetin's and all pleasure exertions. But I don't encourage him in it. I have said to him time and i'^ again : " There is a time for ^ everything, Josiah Allen, and after anybody has lost all their teeth and every mite of hair on the top of their head, it is time for 'em to stop goin' to pleasure exertions." But good land ! I might jest as well talk to the wind ! If that man should get to be as old as Mr. Methusler, and be goin' on a thousand years old, h« would prick up his ears if he should hear of a exertion. AL JOSIAH. -12^ MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. summer long that man has beset me to go to 'em, for he wouldn't go without me. Old Bunker Hill himself hain't any sounder in principle than Josiah Allen, and I have had to work head-work to make excuses and quell him down. But last week they was goin' to have one out on the lake, on a island, and that man sot his foot down that go he would. We was to the breakfast-table a talkin' it over, and says I: ** I sha'n't go, for I am afraid of big water, anyway." Says Josiah: " You are jest as liable to be killed in one place as another." Says I, with- a almost frigid air, as 1 passed him his coffee, " Mebby I shall be drounded on dry land, Josiah Allen, but I don't believe it." Says he, in a complain- in' tonei" I can't get you started onto a exertion for pleasure any way." Says I, in a almost elo- quent way : " I don't believe in makin' such exertions after pleasure. As I have told you time and agin, I don't believe in chasin' of her up. Let her come of her own free will. You can't ketch her by chasin' after her no more than you can fetch up a shower in a drowth by goin' out doors and runnin' after a cloud up in the heavens above you. Sit down and be patient, and when it gets ready the refreshin' rain-drops will begin to fall without none of your help. And it is jest so with pleasure, Josiah Allen; you may chase her up over all the oceans and big mountains of the earth, and she will keep ahead of you all the time; but set down and not fatigue yourself a thinkin' about her, and like as not she will come right into your house unbeknown to you." "Wal," says he, "I guess I'll have another griddle-cake, Sa- mantha." And as he took it, and poured the maple-syrup over it, he added gently, but firmly: GRIDDLE-CAKES. A PLEASURE EXERTION. 331 chief pin. And I guess they had been there as much as ten minutes before I thought that I hadn't took my night-cap off. They looked dreadful curious at me, and I felt awful meachin'. But I jest ketched it off, and never said nothin'. But when Josiah come out of the bedroom with what little hair he has got standin' out in every direction, no two hairs a layin' the same way, and one of his galluses a hangin' most to the floor under his best coat, I up and told 'em. I thought mebby they wouldn't stay long. But Deacon Dobbinses' folks seemed to be all waked up on the subject of religion, and they proposed we should turn it into a kind of a conference meetin' ; so they never went home till after ten o'clock. It was most eleven when Josiah and m.e got to bed agin. And then jest as I was gettin' into a drowse, I heerd the cat in the buttery, and I got up to let her out. And that roused Josiah up, and he thought he heered the cattle in the garden, and he got up and went out. And there we was a marchin' round most all night. And if we would get into a nap, Josiah would think it was mornin', and he would start up and go out to look at the clock. He seemed so afraid we would be belated, and not get to that exertion in time. And there we was on our feet most all night. I lost myself once, for I dreamptthat Josiah was a-drowndin', and Deacon Dobbins was on the shore a-prayin' for him. It started me so, that I jist ketched hold of Josiah and hollered. It skairt him awfully, and says he, " What does ail you, Samantha ? I hain't been asleep before, to-night, and now you have rousted me up for good. I wonder what time it is ! " And then he got out of bed again, and went and looked at the clock. It was half-past one, and he said " He didn't believe we had better go to sleep again, for fear we would be too late for the exertion, and he wouldn't miss that for nothin'." '• Exertion ! " says I, in a awful cold tone. " I should think we had had exertion enough for one spell." But as bad and wore out as Josiah felt bodily, he was all animated in his mind about what a good time he was a-goin' to have. He acted foolish, and I told him so. I wanted to wear my brown-and-black gingham and a shaker, but Josiah insisted that I should wear a new lawn dress that he had brought me home as a present, and I had jest got made up. So, jest to please him, I put it on, and my best bonnet. 332 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. And that man, all I could do and say, would put on a pair of pantaloons I had been a makin' for Thomas Jefferson. They was gettin' up a milatary company to Jonesville, and these panta- loons was blue, with a red stripe down the sides — a kind of uni- form. Josiah took a awful fancy to 'em, and says he : " I will wear 'em, Samantha ; they look so dressy." Says I : " They hain't hardly done. I was goin' to stitch that red stripe on the left leg on again. They hain't finished as they ort to be, and I would not wear 'em. It looks vain in you." Says he : "I will wear 'em, Samantha. I will be dressed up for once." I didn't contend with him. Thinks I : we are makin' fools of ourselves by goin' at all, and if he wants to make a little bigger fool of himself, by wearin' them blue pantaloons, I won't stand in his light. And then I had got some machine oil onto 'em, so I felt that I had got to wash 'em, anyway, before Thomas J. took 'em to vrear. So he put 'em on. I had good vittles, and a sight of 'em. The basket wouldn't hold 'em all, so Josiah had to put a bottle of red rossberry jell into the pocket of his dress-coat, and lots of other little things, such as spoons and knives and forks, in his pantaloons and breast- pockets. He looked like Captain Kidd armed up to the teeth, and I told him so. But good land ! he would have carried a knife in his mouth if I had asked him to, he felt so neat about goin', and boasted so on what a splendid exertion it was goin' to be. We got to the lake about eight o'clock, for the old mare went slow. We was about the first ones there, but they kep' a comin', and before ten o'clock we all got there. The young folks made up their minds they would stay and eat their dinner in a grove on the mainland. But the majority of the old folks thought it was best to go and set our tables where we laid out to in the first place. Josiah seemed to be the most rampant of any of the company about goin'. He said he shouldn't eat a mouthful if he didn't eat it on that island. He said, what was the use of goin' to a pleasure exertion at all if you didn't try to take all the pleasure you could. So about twenty old fools of us sot sail for the island. I had made up my mind from the first on't to face trouble, so it didn't put me out so much when Deacon Dobbins, in gettin' into the boat, stepped onto my new lawn dress and tore a hole A PLEASURE EXERTION. -rn-. 060 in it as big as my two hands, and ripped it half offen the waist. But Josiah havin' felt so animated and tickled about the exertion it worked him up awfully when, jest after we had got well out onto the lake, the wind took his hat off and blew it away out onto the lake. He had made up his mind to look so pretty that day that it worked him up awfully. And then the sun beat down onto him ; and if he had had any hair onto his head it would have seemed more shady. But I did the best I could by him. I stood by him and pin- ned on his red bandanna handkerchief onto his head. But as I was a fixin' it on, I see there was suthin' more than mortification ailed him. The lake was rough and the boat rocked, and I see he was beginnin' to be awful sick. He looked deathly. Pretty soon I felt bad, too. Oh ! the wretchedness of that time. I have enjoyed poor health considerable in my life, but never did I enjoy so much sickness in so short a time as I did on that pleasure exertion to that island. I s'pose our bein' up all night a'most made it worse. When we reached the island we was both weak as cats. I sot right down on a stun and held my head for a spell, for it did seem as if it would split open. After a while I staggered up onto my feet, and finally I got so I could walk straight and sense things a little; though it was tejus work to walk, anyway, for we had landed on a sand-bar, and the sand was so deep it v/as all we could do to wade through it, and it was as hot as hot ashes ever was. Then I began to take the things out of my dinner-basket. The butter had all melted, so we had to dip it out with a spoon. And a lot of water had washed over the side of the boat, so my pies and tarts and delicate cake and cookies looked awful mixed up. But no worse than the rest of the company's did. But we did the best we could, and the chicken and cold meats bein' more solid, had held together quite well, so there was some pieces of it conside'able hull, though it was all very wet and soppy. But we separated 'em out as well as we could, and begun to make preparations to eat. We didn't feel so animated about eatin' as we should if we hadn't been so sick to our stom- achs. But we felt as if we must' hurry, for the man that owned the boat said he knew it would rain before night, by the v/ay the sun scalded. ->34 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. There wasn't a man or a woman there but what the prespera- tion and sweat jest poured down their faces. We was a haggard and melancholy lookin' set. There was a piece of woods a little ways off, but it was up quite a rise of ground, and there wasn't one of us but what had the rheumatiz more or less. We made up a fire on the sand, though it seemed as if it was hot enough to steep the tea and coffee as it was. After we got the fire started, I histed a umberell and sot down under it, and fanned myself hard, for I was afraid of a sunstroke. Wal, I guess I had set there ten minutes or more, when all of a sudden I thought. Where is Josiah ? I hadn't seen him since we had got there. I riz up and asked the company, almost wildly, if they had seen my companion, Josiah. They said, " No, they hadn't." But Celestine Wilkin's little girl, who had come with her grandpa and grandma Gowdy, spoke up, and says she: " I seen him goin' off towards the woods. He acted dretful strange, too; he seemed to be a walkin' off sideways." " Had the sufferin's he had undergone made him delerious ?" says I to myself; and then I started off on the run towards the woods, and old Miss Bobbet, and Miss Gowdy, and Sister Barn- ber, and Deacon Dobbinses' wife all rushed after me. Oh, the agony of them two or three minutes! my mind so dis- tracted with fourbodin's, and the presperation and sweat a pourin' down. But all of a sudden, on the edge of the woods, we found him. Miss Gowdy weighin' a little less than me, mebby loo pounds or so, had got a little ahead of me. He sot backed up against a tree, in a awful cramped position, with his left leg under him. He looked dretful uncomfortable. But when Miss Gowdy hollered out : " Oh, here you be ! We have been skairt about you. What is the matter ? " he smiled a dretful sick smile, and says he : " Oh, I thought I would come out here and meditate a spell. It was alwaj's a real treat to me to medi- tate." Just then I come up a pantin' for breath, and as the wimmen all turned to face me, Josiah scowled at me, and shook his fist at them four wimmen, and made the most mysterious motions of his hands towards 'em. But the minute they turned round he smiled in a sickish way, and pretended to go to whistlin'. A PLEASURE EXERTION. Says I, " What is the matter, Josiah Allen ? What are you off here for ? " *'^/^ .? " exclaimed the first in- sect whose overtures were declined. "Sick of the hollow conventionalities of a rotten civilization," was the rasping reply. " Relapsed into the honest simplicity of primitive observances. Go to grass! " "Ah! then we must trouble you for that corn. In a condi- tion of primitive simplicity there are no rights of property, you know. These are 'hollow conventionalities.' " A light dawned upon the intellect of that pismire. He shook the reefs out of his legs; he scratched the reverse of his ear; he grappled that cereal, and trotted away like a giant refreshed. It was observed that he submitted with a wealth of patience to manipulation by his friends and neighbors, and went some dis- tance out of his way to shake hands with strangers on competing lines of traffic. "What makes that noise?" asked a little boy on the train, the other day. " The cars," answered his mother. " What for ? " Because they are moving." " What are they moving for ? " "The engine makes them." "What engine?" " The engine in front." " What's it in front for ? " " To pull the train." " What train ? " " This one." " This car ? " repeated the youngster, pointing to the one in which they sat. "Yes." " What does it pull for ?" "The engineer makes it." "What engineer?" "The man on the engine." " What engine ? " " The one in front." " What is that in front for?" " I told you that before." " Told who what ? " "Told you." "What for?" "Oh, be still; you are a nuis- ance?" " '\^Tiat's a nuisance?" "A boy who asks too many questions." "Whose boy? "My boy." "What questions?" The conductor came through just then and took up the tickets, and the train pulled up to the station before we could get all the conversation. The last we heard, as the lady jerked the youngster off the platform, was, "What conductor?" — News-^ paper. FROWENFELD'S CLERK. ^^j FROWENFELD'S CLERK. BY GEORGE W. CABLE. ^EORGE W. CABLE was born at New Orleans in 1840, and has spent almost his whole life in that city. He fought, during the war, on the Confederate side, but since the reconstruction of the South, he has been a thor- ough and ferventfriend of Northern— or, rather, anti-slavery— civilization. He was not regularly educated, but his instinctive feeling for style and color in literature received the usual development through work tor the newspapers, though he was in mercantile life when he began to write the "Old Creole Days" sketches. These were followed by '• The Grandissimes," a novel ; "Madame Delphine," a brief romance; a sketch of the "History of New Orleans," and "Dr. Sevier," a novel. In the winter of 1883-84 he began a series of public readings from his books, which had a success almost as immedi- ate and widespread as the books themselves. It was some two or three days after the interview just related that the apothecary of the rue Royale found it necessary to ask a friend to sit in the shop a few minutes v/hile he should go on a short errand. On his return to the shop his friend remarked that if he received many such visitors as the one who had called during his absence, he might be permitted to be vain. It was Honore Grandissime, and he had left no message. " Frowenfeld," said his friend, " it would pay you to employ a regular assistant." Joseph was in an abstracted mood. '■'■ I have some thought of doing so." Unlucky slip! As he pushed open his door next morning, what was his dismay to find himself confronted by some forty men. Five of them leaped up from the door-sill, and some thirty-five from the edge of the trottoir, brushed that part of their wearing-apparel which always fits with great neatness on a Creole, and trooped into the shop. The apothecary fell behind his defenses — that is to say, his prescription desk — and explained to them in a short and spirited address that he did not wish to employ any of them on any terms. Nine-tenths of them under- stood not a word of English; but his gesture was unmistakable. They bowed gratefully, and said good-day. 342 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Now Frowenfeld did these young men an injustice; and tliough they were far from letting him know it, some of them felt it, and interchanged expressions of feeling reproachful to him as they stopped on the next corner to watch a man painting a sign. He had treated them as if they all wanted situations. Was this so ? Far from it. Only twenty men were applicants; the other twenty were friends who had come to see them get the place. And FROWENFELD S CLERK. again, though, as the apothecary had said, none of them kne\^ anything about the drug business — no, nor about any other business under the heavens — they were willing that he should teach them — except one. A young man of patrician softness and costly apparel tarried a moment after the general exodus, and quickly concluded that on Frowenfeld' s account it was prob- ably as well that he could not qualify, since he was expecting FROWENFELD' S CLERIC. \M from France an important Government appointment as soon as these troubles should be settled and Louisiana restored to her former happy condition. But he had a friend — a cousin — whom he would recommend, just the man for the position; a splendid fellow; popular, accomplished — what? the best trainer of dogs that M, Frowenfeld might ever hope to look upon; a "so good fisherman as I never saw! " — the marvel of the ballroom — could handle a partner of twice his weight; the speaker had seen him take a lady so tall that his head hardly came up to her bosom, whirl her in the waltz from right to left — this way! and then, as quick as lightning, turn and whirl her this way, from left to right — "so grezful ligue a peajohn!, He could read and write, and knew more comig song ! " — the speaker would hasten to secure him before he should take some other situation. The wonderful waltzer never appeared upon the scene; yet Joseph made shift to get along, and by and by found a man who partially met his requirements. The way of it was this: With his forefinger in a book which he had been reading, he was one day pacing his shop floor in deep thought, when there came in — or, more strictly speaking, there shot in — a young, auburn-curled, blue-eyed man, whose adolescent buoyancy, as much as his deli- cate, silver-buckled feet and clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him all-pure-Creole. His name, when it was presently heard, accounted for the blond type by revealing a Franco-Celtic origin. " 'Sieur Frowenfel','' he said, advancing like a boy coming in after recess, "I'ave somet'ingbeauteefulto place into yo' window." He wheeled half around as he spoke, and seized from a naked black boy, who at that instant entered, a rectangular object enveloped in paper. Frowenfeld's windrow was fast growing to be a place of art exposition. A pair of statuettes, a golden tobacco-box, a costly jewel-casket, or a pair of richly gemmed horse-pistols — the prop- erty of some ancient gentleman or dame of emaciated fortune, and which must be sold to keep up the bravery of good clothes and pomade that hid slow starvation, went into the shop-window of the ever-obliging apothecary, to be disposed of by tombola. And it is worthy of note in passing, concerning the moral educa- tion of one who proposed to make no conscious compromise with any sort of evil, that in this driveling species of gambling he saw nothing hurtful or,. improper. But "in Frowenfeld's window" o 44 MARK TWAIN' S LIBRAE V OF HUMOR. appeared also articles for simple sale or mere transient exhibi- tion; as, for instance, the wonderful tapestries of a blind widow of ninety; tremulous little bunches of flowers, proudly stated to have been made entirely of the bones of the ordinary catfish; others, large and spreading, the sight of which would make any botanist fall down "and die as mad as the wild waves be," whose ticketed merit was that they were composed exclusively of materials produced upon Creole soil; a picture of the Ursulines' convent and chapel, done in forty-five minutes by a child of ten years, the daughter of the widow Felicie Grandissime; and the siege of Troy, in ordinary ink, done entirely with the pen, the labor of twenty years, by "a citizen of New Orleans." It was natural that these things should come to " Frowenfeld's corner," for there, oftener than elsewhere, the critics were gathered together. Ah! wonderful men, those critics; and, fortunately, we have a few still left. The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his bur- den upon the counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting. He said nothing — with his mouth; but stood at arm's length balancing the painting, and casting now upon it and now upon Joseph Frowenfeld a look more replete with triumph than Csesar's three-worded despatch. The apothecary fixed upon it long and silently the gaze of a somnambulist. At length he spoke: "What is it?" " Louisiana rif-using to hanter de h-Union! " replied the Cre- ole, with an ecstasy that threatened to burst forth in hip-hurrahs. Joseph said nothing, but silently wondered at Louisiana's anatomy. "Gran' subjec'! " said the Creole. "Allegorical," replied the hard-pressed apothecary. "Allegoricon? No, sir ! Allegoricon never saw that pigshoe- If you insist to know who make dat pigshoe — de hartis' stan' bif-ore you! " "It is your work?" " 'Tis de work of me, Raoul Innerarity, cousin to de dijting- wish Honore Grandissime. I swear to you, sir, on stack of Bible as 'igh as yo' head! " He smote his breast FROWENFELD' S CLERK. 345 " Do you wish to put it in the window?" "Yes, seh." "For sale?" M. Raoul Innerarity hesitated a moment before replying: " 'Sieur Frowenfel', I think it is a foolishness to De too proud, eh ? I want you to say, ' My frien', 'Sieur Innerarity, never care to sell anything; 'tis for egshibbyshun' ; inais — when somebody look at it, so," the artist cast upon his work a look of languish- ing covetousness, •' 'you ?,diy,foudre totmerre f what de dev' ! — I take dat ris-pon-sibble-ty — you can have her for two hun'red fifty doUah !' Better not be too proud, eh, 'Sieur Frowenfel' ?" "No, sir," said Joseph, proceeding to place it in the window, his new friend following him about, spaniel-wise; "but you had better let me say plainly that it is for sale." "Oh — I don't care — mais — my rillation' will never forgive me! Mats — go-ahead-I-don't-care! 'Tis for sale." "'Sieur Frowenfel'," he resumed, as they came away from the window, " one week ago" — he held up one finger — "what I was doing? Makin' bill of ladin', my faith! — for my cousin Honore! an' now, I ham a hartis'! So soon I foun' dat, I say, ' Cousin Honore ' " — the eloquent speaker lifted his foot and administered to the empty air a soft, polite kick — " I never goin' to doanoder lick o' work so long I live; adieu! " He lifted a kiss from his lips and wafted it in the direction of his cousin's office. "Mr. Innerarity," exclaimed the apothecary, "I fear you are making a great mistake." " You tink I hass too much ? " " Well, sir, to be candid, I do ; but that is not your greatest mistake." "What she's worse?" The apothecary simultaneously smiled and blushed. " I would rather not say ; it is a passably good example of Creole art ; there is but one way by which it can ever be worth what you ask for it." "What dat is?" The smile faded and the blush deepened as Frowenfeld replied : "If It could become the means of reminding this community that crude ability counts next to nothing in art, and that nothing 3 46 MARK TWA IN ' S LIBRAE V OF HUMOR, else in this world ought to work so hard as genius, it would be worth thousands of dollars ! " "You tink she is worse a t'ousand dollah ?" asked the Creole, shadow and sunshine chasing each other across his face. "No, sir." The unwilling critic strove unnecessarily against his smile. "'Ow much you t'ink?" '■'■ Mr. Innerarity, as an exercise it is worth whatever truth or skill it has taught you ; to a judge of paintings it is ten dollars' worth of paint thrown away ; but as an article of sale it is worth what it will bring without misrepresentation." " Two — hun-rade an' — fifty — dollahs — or not'in' ! " said the indignant Creole, clenching one fist, and with the other hand lifting his hat by the front corner and slapping it down upon the counter. "Ha, ha, ha! a pase of waint — a wase of paint! * Sieur Frowenfel', you don' know not'in' 'bout it ! You har a jedge of painting ? " he added cautiously. "No, sir." " Eh, bieti ! foudre fotmerre ! — look yeh ! you know ? ' Sieur Frowenfel' ? Dat de way de publique halways talk about a hartis's firs' pigshoe. But, I hass you to pardon me. Monsieur Frowenfel', if I 'ave speak a lill too warm." " Then you must forgive me if, in my desire to set you right, I have spoken with too much liberty. I probably should have said only what I first intended to say, that unless you are a per- son of independent means " " You t'ink I would make bill of ladin' ? Ah ! Hm-m ! " " that you had made a mistake in throwing up your means of support " "But 'e 'as fill de place an' don' want me mo'. You want a clerk? — one what can speak fo' lang-widge — French, Eng-lish, Spanish, an' Italienne ? Come ! I work for you in de mawnin' an' paint in de evenin' ; come ! " Joseph was taken unaware. He smiled, frowned, passed his hand across his brow, noticed, for the first time since his delivery of the picture, the naked little boy standing against the edge of a door, said, " why ," and smiled again. "I riffer you to my cousin Honore," said Innerarity. " Have you any knowledge of this business? " " I 'ave." FROWENFELUS CLERK. 347 '"Can you keep shop in the forenoon or afternoon indifferently, as I may require ?" "Eh? Forenoon — afternoon ?" was the reply. '' Can you paint sometimes in the morning and keep shop in the evening ? " "Yes, sell." Minor details were arranged on the spot. Raoul dismissed the black boy, took off his coat and fell to work decanting some- thing, with the understanding that his salary, a microscopic one, should begin from date if his cousin should recommend him. " 'Sieur Frowenfel','" he called from under the counter, later in the day, " you t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pig- shoe of a niggah ?" "Certainly not.' " Ah, my soul ! what a pigshoe I could paint of Bras-Coupe ! " We have the afflatus in Louisiana, if nothing else. 348 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE MAN AND THE GOOSE. BY BIERCE. A MAN was plucking a living goose, when his victim addressed him thus : " Suppose yoit were a goose ; do you think ou would relish this sort of thing? " JUST THE WAY HE FELT. "Well, suppose I were," answered the man; "do you think you would like to pluck me ? " " Indeed I would ! " was the emphatic, natural, but injudicious reply. "Just so," concluded her tormentor; "that's the way /feel about the matter." NEVADA NABOBS IN NEW YORK. 34^ NEVADA NABOBS IN NEW YORK. BY MARK TWAIN. In Nevada there used to be current the story of an adventure of two of her nabobs, which may or may not have occurred. I give it for what it is worth : Col. Jim had seen somewhat of the Avorld, and knew more or less of its ways ; but Col. Jack was from the back settlements of the States, had led a life of arduous toil, and had never seen a city. These two, blessed with sudden wealth, projected a visit to New York — Col. Jack to see the sights, and Col. Jim to guard his unsophistication from misfortune. They reached San Fran- cisco in the night, and sailed in the morning. Arrived in New York, Col. Jack said : " I've heard tell of carriages all my life, and now I mean to have a ride in one ; I don't care what it costs. Come along." They stepped out on the sidewalk, and Col. Jim called a stylish tarouche. But Col. Jack said : " No, sir ! None of your cheap-John turn-outs for me.. I'm here to have a good time, and money ain't any object. I mean to have the nobbiest rig that's going. Now here comes the very trick. Stop that yaller one with the pictures on it — don't you fret — I'll stand all the expenses myself." So Col. Jim stopped an empty omnibus, and they got in. Said Col. Jack : " Ain't it gay, though ? Oh, no, I reckon not ! Cushions and windows and pictures, till you can't rest. What would the boys say if they could see us cutting a swell like this in New York ? By George, I wish they could se& us !" Then he put his head out of the window,and shouted to the driver: " Say, Johnny, this suits me! — suits yours truly, you bet, you! I want this shebang all day. I'm on it, old man ! Let 'em out! Make 'em go ! We'll make it all right with you, Johnny ! " The driver passed his hand through the strap-hole, and tapped for his fare — it was before the gongs came into common use. Col. Jack took the hand, and shook it cordially. He said : "You twig me, old pard ! All right between gents. Smell of fhat, and see how you like it ! " 350 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. And he put a twenty-dollar gold piece in the driver's hand. After a moment the driver said he could not make change. *' Bother the change ! Ride it out. Put it in your pocket." Then to Col. Jim, with a sounding slap on his thigh : ''Ain't it style, though? Hanged if I don't hire this thing every day for a week." The omnibus stopped, and a young lady got in. Col. Jack stared a moment, then nudged Col. Jim with his elbow : " Don't say a word," he whispered. " Let her ride, if she wants to. Gracious, there's room enough !" The young lady got out her porte-monnaie, and handed her fare to Col. Jack. ^'What's this for ?" said he. " Give it to the driver, please." " Take back your money, madam. We can't allow it. You're welcome to ride here as long as you please, but this shebang's chartered, and we can't let you pay a cent." The girl shrunk into a corner, bewildered. An old lady with a basket climbed in, and proffered her fare. "Excuse me," said Col. Jack. "You're perfectly welcome here, madam, but we can't allow you to pay. Set right down there, mum, and don't you be the least uneasy. Make yourself just as free as if you was in your own turn-out. " Within two minutes, three gentlemen, two fat women, and a couple of children entered. "Come right along, friends," said Col. Jack ; " don't mind us. This is a free blow-out." Then he whispered to Col. Jim, "New York ain't no sociable place, I don't reckon — it ain't no 7iame iox it ! " He resisted every effort to pass fares to the driver, and made everybody cordially welcome. The situation dawned on the peo- ple, and they pocketed their money, and delivered themselves up to covert enjoyment of the episode. Half a dozen more pas- sengers entered. "Oh, thtxe's plenty of room," said Col. Jack. "Walk right in, and make yourselves at home. A blow-out ain't worth any- thing as a blow-out, unless a body has company." Then in a whisper to Col. Jim : " But aint these New Yorkers friendly ? And ain't they cool about it, too ? Icebergs ain't anywhere. I reckon they'd tackle a hearse, if it was going their way." More passengers got m ; more yet, and still more. Both NEVADA NABOBS IN NEV/ YORK. 351 seats were filled, and a file of men were standing up, holding on to the cleats overhead. Parties with baskets and bundles were climbing up on the roof. Half-suppressed laughter rippled up from all sides. " Well, for clean, cool, out-and-out cheek, if this don't bano- anything that ever I saw, I'm an Injun ! " whispered Col. Jack. A Chinaman crowded his way in: " I weaken ! " said Col. Jack. " Hold on, driver ! Keep your seats, ladies and gents. Just make yourselves free — everything's paid for. Driver, rustle these folks around as long as they're a COL. JACK WEAKENS, mina to go — friends of ours, you know. Take them everywheres — and if you want more money, come to the St. Nicholas, and we'll make it all right. Pleasant journey to you, ladies and gents — go it just as long as you please — it sha'n't cost you a cent !" The two comrades got out, and Col. Jack said : "Jimmy, it's the sociablest place / ever saw. The Chinaman waltzed in as comfortable as anybody. If we'd stayed awhile, I reckon we'd had some niggers. B' George! we'll have to barri- cade our doors to-night, or some of these ducks will be trying to sleep with us." 352 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. A JERSEY CENTENARIAN. BY BRET HARTE. I HAVE seen her at last. She is a hundred and seven years old, and remembers George Washington quite distinctly. It is some- what confusing, however, that she also remembers a contem- poraneous Josiah W. Per- kins, of Basking Ridge, N. J., and, I think, has the impression that Per- kins, was the better man. Perkins, at the close of the last century, paid her some little attention. There are a few things that a really noble woman of a hundred and seven never forgets. It was Perkins, who - said to her in 1795, in the streets of Philadelphia, '' Shall I show thee Gen- eral Washington ?" Then she said, carelesslike (for you know, child, at that time it wasn't what it is now to see General Wash- ington)— she said," So do, Josiah, so do !" Then he pointed to a tall man who got out of a carriage, and went into a large house. He was larger than you be. He wore his own hair — not powdered; had a flowered chintz vest, with yellow breeches and blue stockings, and a broad-brimmed hat. In summer he wore a white straw hat, and at his farm at Basking Ridge he always wore it. At this point, it became too evident that she was describing the clothes of the all-fascinnting Perkins: so I gently but firmly led her back to Washington. JOSIAH W. PERKINS. A JERSEY centenarian: -. r -> O 0 o Then it appeared that she did not remember exactly what he wore. To assist her, I sketched the general historic dress of that period. She said she thought he was dressed like that. Em- boldened by my success, I added a hat of Charles II., and pointed shoes of the eleventh century. She indorsed these with such cheerful alacrity that I dropped the subject. The house upon which I had stumbled, or, rather, to which my horse — a Jersey hack, accustomed to historic research — had brought me, was low and quaint. Like most old houses, it had the appearance of being encroached upon by the surrounding glebe, as if it were already half in the grave, with a sod or two, in the shape of moss, thrown on it, like ashes on ashes, and dust on dust. A wooden house, instead of acquiring dignity v/ith age, is apt to lose its youth and respectability together. A porch, with scant, sloping seats, from which even the winter's snow must have slid uncomfortably, projected from a doorway that opened most unjustifiably into a small sitting-room. There was no vestibule, or locus pcenitenticv^ for the embarrassed or bashful visitor: he passed at once from the security of the public road into shame- ful privacy. And here, in the mellow autumnal sunlight, that, streaming through the maples and sumach on the opposite bank, flickered and danced upon the floor, she sat and discoursed of George Washington, and thought of Perkins. She was quite in keeping v/ith the house and the season, albeit a little in advance of both; her skin be^ng of a faded russet, and her hands so like dead November leaves, that I fancied they even rustled when she moved them. For all that, shev/as quite bright and cheery; her faculties still quite vigorous, although performing irregularly and spasmodi- cally. It was somewhat discomposing, I confess, to observe that at times her lower jaw would drop, leaving her speechless, until one of the family would notice it, and raise it smartly into place with a slight snap — an operation always performed in such an habitual, perfunctory manner, generally in passing to and fro in their household duties, that it was very trying to the spectator. It was still more embarrassing to observe that the dear old lady had evidently no knowledge of this, but believed she was still talking, and that, on resuming her actual vocal utterance, she was often abrupt and incohersnt, beginning always in the middle of a sentence, and often in the middle of a word. " Sometimes," ;54 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. said her daughter, a giddj^, thoughtless young thing of eighty- five — " sometimes just moving her head sort of unhitches her jaw; and, if we don't happen to see it, she'll go on talking for hours without ever making a sound." Although I was convmced, after this, that during my interview I had lost several important revelations regarding George Washington through these peculiar TALKING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. lapses, I could not help reflecting how beneficent were these pro- visions of the Creator — how, if properly studied and applied, they might be fraught with happiness to mankind — how a slight jostle or jar at a dinner-party might make the post-prandial eloquence of garrulous senility satisfactory to itself, yet harmless to others — how a more intimate knowledge of anatomy, introduced into A JERSEY CENTENARIAN. ore the domestic circle, might make a home tolerable at least, \f not happy — how a long-suffering husband, under the pretense of a conjugal caress, might so unhook his wife's condyloid process as to allow the flow of expostulation, criticism or denunciation to go on with gratification to her, and perfect immunity to himself. But this was not getting back to George Washington and the early struggles of the Republic. So I returned to the comman- der-in-chief, but found, after one or two leading questions, that she was rather inclined to resent his re-appearance on the stage. Her reminiscences here were chiefly social and local, and more or less flavored with Perkins. We got back as far as the Revo- lutionary epoch, or, rather, her impressions of that epoch, when it was still fresh in the public mind. And here I came upon an incident, purely personal and local, but, withal, so novel, weird and uncanny, that for a while I fear it quite displaced George Washington in my mind, and tinged the autumnal fields beyond with a red that was not of the sumach. I do not remember to have read of it in the books. I do not know that it is entirely authentic. It was attested to me by mother and daughter, as an uncontradicted tradition. In the little field beyond, where the plough still turns up mus- ket-balls and cartridge-boxes, took place one of those irregular skirmishes between the militiamen and Knyphausen's stragglers, that made the retreat historical. A Hessian soldier, wounded in both legs and utterly helpless, dragged himself to the cover of a hazel-copse, and lay there hidden for two days. On the third day, maddened by thirst, he managed to creep to the rail-fence of an adjoining farm-house, but found him.self unable to mount it or pass through. There was no one in the house but a little girl of six or seven years. He called to her, and in a faint voice asked for water. She returned to the house, as if to comply with his request, but, mounting a chair, took from the chimney a heavily loaded Queen Anne musket, and. going to the door, took deliberate aim at the helpless intruder, and fired. The man fell back dead, vv'ithout a groan. She replaced the musket, and, returning to the fence, covered the body with boughs and leaves, until it was hidden. Two or three da3^s after, she related the occurrence in a careless, casual way, and leading the way to the fence, with a piece of bread and butter in her guileless little fin- gers, pointed out the result of her simple, unsophisticated effort. 356 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR. The Hessian was decently buried, but I could not find out what became of the little girl. Nobody seemed to remember. I trust that, in after years, she was happily married; that no Jersey Lovelace attemj^ted to trifle with a heart whose impulses were so prompt, and whose purposes were so sincere. They did not seem to know if she had married or not. Yet it does not seem proba- ble that such simplicity of conception, frankness of expression, and deftness of execution, were lost to posterity, or that they failed, in their time and season, to give flavor to the domestic felicity of the period. Beyond this, the story perhaps has litrle value, except as an offset to the usual anecdotes of Hessian atrocity. They had their financial panics even in Jersey, in the old days. She remembered when Dr. White married your cousin Mary — or was it Susan? — yes, it was Susan. She remembers that your Uncle Harry brought in an armful of bank-notes — paper money, you know — and threw them in the corner, saying they were no good to anybody. She remembered playing with them, and giv- ing them to your Aunt Anna — no, child, it was your own mother, bless your heart! Some of them was marked as high as a hun- dred dollars. Everybody kept gold and silver in a stocking, or in a '* chaney " vase, like that. You never used money to buy anything. When Josiah went to Springfield to buy anything, he took a cartload of things with him to exchange. That yaller picture-frame was paid for in greenings. But then people knew jest what they had. They didn't fritter their substance away in unchristian trifles, like your father, Eliza Jane, who doesn't know that there is a God who will smite him hip and thigh; for ven- geance is mine, and those that believe in me. But here, singu- larly enough, the inferior maxillaries gave out, and her jaw dropped. (I noticed that her giddy daughter of eighty-five was sitting near her, but I do not pretend to connect this fact with the arrested flow of personal disclosure.) Howbeit, when she recovered her speech again, it appeared that she was complaming of the weather. The seasons had changed very much since your father went to sea. The winters used to be terrible in those days. When she went over to Springfield, in June, she saw the snow still on Wat- son's Ridge. There were whole day3 when you couldn't get over to William Henry's, their next neighbor, a quarter of a mile away. A JERSEY CENTENARIAN. ^r^ It was that drefful winter that the Spanish sailor was found. You don't ren:ember the Spanish sailor, Eliza Jane — it was before your time. There was a little personal skirmishing here, which I feared, at first, might end in a suspension of maxillary functions, and the loss of the story: but here it is. Ah, me! it is a pure white winter idyl : how shall I sing it this bright, gay autumnal day? It was a terrible night, that winter's night, when she and the century were young togethei". The sun was lost at three o'clock: the snowy night came down like a white sheet, that flapped around the house, beat at the windows with its edges, and at last wrapped it in a close embrace. In the middle of the night, they thought they heard above the wind a voice crying, " Christus, Chris- tus!" in a foreign tongue. They opened the door — no easy task in the north wind that pressed its strong shoulders against it — but nothing was to be seen but the drifting snow. The next morning dawned on fences hidden, and a landscape changed and obliterated with drift. During the day, they again heard the cry of " Christus!" this time faint and hidden, like a child's voice. They searched in vain: the drifted snow hid its secret. On the third day they broke a path to the fence, and then they heard the cry distinctly. Digging down, they found the body of a man — a Spanish sailor, dark and bearded, with ear-rings in his ears. As they stood gazing down at his cold and pulseless figure, the cry of "Christus!" again rose upon the wintry air; and they turned and fled in superstitious terror to the house. And then one of the children, bolder than the rest, knelt down, and opened the dead man's rough pea-jacket, and found — what think you! — a little blue-and-green parrot, nestling against his breast. It was the bird that had echoed mechanically the last despairing cry of the life that was given to save it. It was the bird, that ever after, amid outlandish oaths and wilder sailor-songs, that I fear often shocked the pure ears of its gentle mistress, and brought scandal into the Jerseys, still retained that one weird and mournful cry. The sun meanwhile was sinking behind the steadfast range beyond, and I coulJ not help feeling that I must depart v/ith my wants unsatisfied. I had brought away no historic fragment: I absolutely knew little or nothing new regarding George Washing- ton. I had been addressed variously by the names of different members of the family who Vv^ere dead and forgotten; I had 358 MARK TWAIN ' S LI3RAR V OF HUMOK. stood for an hour in the past: yet I had not added to my histori- cal knowledge, nor the practical benefit of your readers. I spoke once more of Washington, and she replied with a reminiscence of Perkins. Stand forth, O Josiah W. Perkins, of Basking Ridge, N. J. I Thou wast of little account in thy life, I warrant ; thou didst not even feel the greatness of thy day and time; thou didst criticise thy superiors; thou wast small and narrow in thy ways; thy very name and grave are unknown and uncared for: but thou wast once kind to a woman who survived thee, and, lo! thy name is again spoken of men, and for a moment Ufted up above th}' betters. PH(ENIX A T SEA. 3 5 O PHCENIX AT SEA. BY JOHN PHCENIX. Bright and beautiful rose the sun, from out the calm blue sea, its early rays gleaming on the snow-white decks of the Northerner, and " gilding refined gold " as they penetrated the stateroom " A," and lingering, played among the tresses of the slumbering McAuburn. It was a lovely morning ; " the winds were all hushed, and the waters at rest," and no sound was heard but the throbbing of the engine and the splash of the paddle-wheels as the gallant old Northerner s^ed. on her way, "tracking the trackless sea." Two sailors, engaged in their morning devotions with the holy-stones near my room, amused me not a little. One of them, either accidentally or with " malice prepense," threw a bucket of water against the bulwark, which, ricocheting, struck the other on his dorsal extremity, as he leaned to his work, mak- ing that portion of his frame exceedingly damp and him exceed- ingly angry. "You just try that again, your soul," exclaimed the offended one, " and I'll slap your chops for you." " Oh, yes, you will," sarcastically rejoined he of the water bucket. I've heerd of you afore ! You're old chop-slapper s son, aint you ? Father 7aent round slapping people's chops, didn't he ? " Then fol- lowed a short fight, in which, as might have been expected, " Old chop-slapper's son " got rather the worst of it. 'there was no excuse for being sick that morning, so our pas- sengers, still pale, but with cheerful hope depicted in their coun- tenances, soon began to throng the deck ; segars were again brought into requisition, and we had an opportunity of ascertain- ing " whether there was any Bourbon among us." A capital set of fellows they were. There was Moore, and Parker, and Bowers (one of Joe Bowers's boys), and Sarsaparilla Meade, and Free- man, which last mentioned gentlemen, so amusing were they, appeared to be travelling expressly to entertain us. And there were no ladies, which to me was a blessed dispensation. "Oh, woman ! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please ; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou." 360 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Certainly : but at sea, Woman, you are decidedly disagreeable. In the first place, you generally bring babies with you, which are a crying evil, and then you have to have the best stateroom and the finest seat at the table, and monopolize the captain's atten- tion and his room, and you make remarks to one another about us, and our segars and profanity, and accuse us of singing rowdy songs nights ; and you generally wind up by doing some scanda- lous thing yourself, when half of us take your part and the other half don't, and we get all together by the ears, and a pretty state of affairs ensues. No, woman ! you are agreeable enough on shore, if taken homeopathically, but on a steamer, you are a decided nuisance. We had a glorious day aboard the old Northertier ; we played whist, and sang songs, and told stories, many of which were coeval with our ancient school-lessons, and, like them, came very easy, going over the second time, and many drank strong waters, and becoming mopsed thereon, toasted "the girls we'd left behind us," whereat one, who, being a temperance man, had guz- zled soda-water until his eyes seemed about to pop from his head, pondered deeply, sighed, and said nothing. And so we laughed and sang and played and whiskied and soda-watered through the day. And fast the old Northerner rolled on. And at night the Captain gave us a grand game supper in his room, at which game we played not, but went at it in sober earnest ; and then there were more songs (the same ones, though, and the same stories too, over again), and some speechifying, and much- fun, until at eight bells we separated, some shouting, some laughing, some crying (but not with sorrow), but all extremely happy, and so we turned in. But before I sought stateroom A that night, I executed a small scheme, for insuring undisturbed repose, which I had revolved in my mind during the day, and which met with the most brilliant success, as you shall hear. You remember the two snobs that every night, in the pursuit of exercise under difficulties, walk up and down on the deck, arm in arm, right over your stateroom. You remember how, when just as you are getting into your first doze, they commence, tramp ! tramp ! tramp ! right over your head ; then you " hear them fainter, fainter still ; " you listen in horrible dread of their return, nourishing the while a feeble-mmded hope that they may have gone below — when, horror ! here they come, louder, louder, PHCENIX A T SEA. 361 till tramp ! tramp ! tramp ! they go over your head again, and with rage in your heart, at the conviction that sleep is impossible, you sit up in bed and despairingly light an unnecessary segar. They v/ere on board the Norther?ier, and the night before had aroused my indignation to that strong pitch that I had deter- mined on their downfall. So, before retiring, I pro- ceeded to the upper deck, and there did T quietly attach a small cord to the stanchions which, stretching across about six inches from the planking, formed what in maritime matters is known as a "booby trap." This done, I re- paired to my room, turn- ed in, and calmly awaited the result. In ten min- utes they came; I heard them laughing together as they mounted the lad- der. Then commenced the exercise, louder, louder, tramp ! tramp ! — thump ! (a double-bar- reled thump) down they came together, "Oh, what a fall was there, my coun- trymen!" Two deep groans were elicited, and then followed what, if published, would make two closely printed royal octavo pages of profanity. I heard them d — n the soul of the man that did it. It was my soul that they alluded to, but I cared not, I lay there chuckling; "they called, but I answered not again," and when at length they limped away, their loud pro- fanity subdued to a blasphemous growl, I turned over in a svv^eet frame of mind, and, falling instantaneously asleep, dreamed a dream, a happy dream of " home and thee " — Susan Ann Jane ! " TRAMP ! TRAMP ! TRAlVrP ! " •562 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. A VICTIM OF HOSPITALITY. BY REV. F. W. SHELTON. "CT W. SHELTON was born at Jamaica, L. I., in 1814. He studied Divin- * ity, and was ordained in 1847. His " Up the River Letters" were written at Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, and published first in the Knickerbocker Magazine, of which he was a favorite contributor. He was the author of " The Trollopiad," a satire on English travelers in America, "The Rector of St. Bardolph's," " Peeps from the Belfry," and other bright and spirited volumes, characterized by humor of a quiet and refined sort. " M — ," I said, " I have brought you to a cold, dreary house! " I must tell you that I had been fool enough to bring a friend to my house, and he an invalid man. Sitting in the cars, I espied him, and with a devilish selfishness said, " I will have that man to share with me the dreariness of this cold and misty night." I walked up to him, and tapped him on the shoulder. " Ah ! " said he. " Come," said I, in a chirping tone of concealed hypocrisy, " and make my house your home. There is nobody there, but we will have a good time of it. You are going to the Point. Never mind, come with me." In a moment of delusion the in- fatuated man agreed. After we had conversed for a few minutes in the study we began to feel cold. "Now," said I, "we must have a rousing fire, and a cup of hot tea : that will make us feei better. Excuse me for a moment : amuse yourself till I return. I will step over and ask Palmer to come and kindle a good fire, and help me along. All will be right." " Well," said he. Palmer is my right-hand man. There is an old farm-house about fifty yards off. It used to be a tavern in the Revolutionary War. It has settled a good deal within the last hundred years ; that is to say, the walls, the floors, and the beams are sunken very much from the horizontal line observable in the floor of a bowling- alley ; and the chimneys look weather-beaten. Still, it is a stout and substantial old house, and there is no doubt that it would last, with a little more patching, another hundred years. There is s long piazza in front of it, which is much sunken, and in the yard an old-fashioned well, which has afforded drink to cattle and to men for a century and more. The waters are still transcendently sweet and lucid. When the summer-heats raged in the past A VICTIM OF HOSPITALITY. 36 August, I used to stop and imbibe, taking my turn out of the tin cup with the itinerating pedler, who had unburdened his back of the wearisome load and placed it beside the trough. Your wine of a good vintage may make the eyes glisten a little at the tables of luxury, but depend upon it, a well of water, pure water, gushing up by the way-side, to the weary and heavy-laden is drink indeed. As I ascended the steps of the piazza, I observed that there was a single-mold candle burning within, and knocked KEEPING UP A FIRE. confidently at the door of the house. It was opened. " Is Pal- mer within?" "No, John is absent. He will begone over Sunday." Alas ! alas ! I turned on my heel, opened the garden- gate, iind finding the path through the peach-trees with some difficulty on the misty night, went back to the forlorn study. My invalid friend looked dismal enough. "Come," said I, slapping him on the back very gently (to have done it roughly on the present emergency would have been to insult him), " we have to take care of ourselves. What is more easy ? We must 364 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. flare up. We must have a little light, a little fire. My next- door neighbor is away. That makes not the least difference." With that, I lighted the astral lamp— no, the globe-lamp — a con- temptible affair, which is a disgrace to the inventor. You raise the wick as high as possible before it will shed any light at all. In a moment it glares out, and presently becomes dim, filling your apartment with suffocating smoke and soot. Confound the lamp, v/ith its brazen shaft and marble pedestal ! I could with a good- will dash it on the floor. I remembered that there was an abundance of shavings under the shed. Going out, I collected an arm-full and rammed them into the kitchen stove, put in a few chips, and a stick or two of -wood, and applied a match. Then I took the tea-kottle, and tramping to the well, filled it with water, placed it upon the stove, and it presently bubbled. Took down a caddy of black tea. After a while I found a loaf of stale bread, which makes excellent toast. In three-quarters of an hour, during which I spent the time in purgatory, I returned to the study and said, touching my friend on the shoulder, "Tea is ready." We went into the kitchen and sat down. I said grace. The lamp smoked, the fire burned poorly, the tea was cold, my friend shivered, and I afterward heard that he said that I seemed to think that the globe-lamp was both light and warmth. The ungrateful wretch ! After tea, the first natural impulse was to get warm, and still keep ourselves alive. My friend behaved extremely well, all things considered; and as the stove wanted replenishing v/ith shavings every five minutes, he acted once or twice as a volunteer on this mission. He tried to be cheerful, but his visage looked sad. " How stern of lineament, how grim! " For my part I could not but enjoy an inward chuckle, like one who has the best of a bargain in the purchase of a horse. People come to your house to be enter- tained. In the hands of your hospitality they are like dough, to be molded into any shape of comfort. They fairly lay them- selves out to be feted and feasted and flattered and soothed and comforted, and tucked in at night. They enjoy for the time- being a luxurious irresponsibility. With what ;omposure do they lounge in your arm-chair, and lazily troll their eyes over the pictures in your show-books! How swingingly they saunter on your porch or in your garden, with their minds buoyant as thistle- down, lightly inhaling the aromatic breeze, fostered by all whom A VICTIM OF HOSPITALITY. ;65 they meet, and addressing all in lady-tones. Bless their dear hearts, how they do grind their teeth for dinner! Dinner! Some- times it is no easy matter to get up a dinner. While they are in this opiate state, the man of the house is in cruel perplexity, and beef-steaks are rare. Oh! it is a rich treat and triumph, now and then, to have these fellows on the hip; to see them put to some little exsrtion to conceal their feelings, when they have expected all exertion to be made on the other part; to scan their physi- ognomy, and to read their thoughts as plainly as if printed in the clearest and most open type: "This does not pay. You will not catch me in this scrape again. I will go where lean be entertained better." I say that I enjoy their discomfiture, and consider it (if it happens rarely) a rich practical joke. It is entirely natural, and in accordance v/ith correct principles, that they should feel exactly as they do. Does it not agree with what I have already said! Constituted as we are, there must be the outward and visible sign to stir up the devotion of the heart. Your grace of warm welcome will not do. Give your friend a good dinner, or a glass of wine; let the fire be warm and bright. Then he will come again. Otherwise not. It is human nature. At any rate, it is my nature. Here, however, we draw the fine hair-line of distinction. If your friend thinks more of the animal than of the spiritual; if he neglects any duty, undervalues any friendship, because the outward is poor, meagre, of necessity wanting — call him your friend no more! " Let us go to bed," said I. " Done," said he. '■'■ No, not done. The beds are to be made. There is no chambermaid in the house. What of that? Excuse me for a moment, while you ram a few more shavings into the stove." I go up-stairs into the spare chamber. I can find nothing. Afte a half-hour's work, I man- age, however, to procure pillow-ca es, sheets, blankets. I go down-stairs and tap my shivering friend on the shoulder, and say, chirpingly, "Come, you must go to your snuggery, your nest. You will sleep like a top, and feel better in the morning." I get him into bed, and after his nightcap is on, and his head upon the pillow, I say, " Good night; pleasant dreams to you." " Good night," he responded, with a feeble smile. Then I tumbled into my own bed, which was made up anyhow, looking out first on the moon just rising above the fog. Oh ! thou cold, dry, brassy Moon! do not shine into my chamber 366 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY CF HUMOR. when I want repose. Phcebe, Diana, Luna, call thee by what- ever name, let not thy pale smile be cast upon my eyes! If so, • s^veet sleep is gone, and pleasant dreams. Out, out, out with thy skeleton face, O volcanic, brassy Moon! When the morrow came, I went into my friend's chamber, and, as if he had been a king or a prince, asked him how he had rested duruig the night, and if the coverlets had kept him warm. He was com.pelled to say, as he was a man of strict veracity, that he had been a little cold. The undiscriminating varlet! I had given him all the blankets in the house. It was Sunday morning. A Sunday in the country is a theme on which my invalid friend, who is an author, had expatiated with wonderful effect in one of his books. '^Vhen he came down- stairs, as the shavings were not yet lighted, I took him by the arm and proposed a walk on the grass. But the grass was wet- tened by copious dews. He returned chilled, and hovered over the cold stove. It was nearly time for breakfast, but I had not given him a word of encouragement on that point. Breakfast ■was a puzzler. All of a sudden, striking my hand on my fore- head, as if in the elicitment of a bright idea, I rushed out of the kitchen, crossed the little garden, and knocked at the door of the old farm-house. The face of the good landlady was forthwith visible. ''Mad- ame," I said, " I am in a little quandary. I have a friend with me; besides ourselves, there is nobody and nothing in the house. Will you have the kindness to provide us breakfast, dinner and tea to-day ? " She most obligingly consented. In half an hour I conducted the author triumphantly to the old mansion. The clean white table-cloth was spread; the room was "as warm as toast," and my friend's spirits revived. We went to church. His responses were heart-felt and audible. On returning, the walk made his blood circulate a little, and as he sat in the rocking-chair in the old farm-house waiting for the broiled chicken and looking up at the white-washed beams, he was the picture of contentment. I was almost provoked v/ith myself for getting him into such a comfortable fix. THE DONATION PARTY. 567 THE DONATION PARTY. BY R. J. BURDETTE. There was a sound of revelry by night. The flickering rays of the street lamps fell upon the joyful ones as they gathered themselves unto the feast, for lo, they reasoned one with another, Hath not the preacher said, "There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor." So they got themselves up unto the house of feasting and bore their countenances merrilj. And it was so that the Painted Pine Pail called aloud unto the Cheap Hearth Broom and said : " Lo, here, thou fair one with the broom-corn bang, whither goest thou ?" And the Cheap Hearth Broom answered and said : " Thou know- est." Therefore said the Painted Pine Pail: "You bet your blue handle." And then came unto them the Tin Dipper and the Jar of the Tomato Preserves and the Peck of Beans. And they cried unto them, saying: '•Tarry a little, for we also journey your way." And they greatly were rejoiced and v/ent their way, and they sang and lifted up the voice and shouted with an exceeding great shout, for their hearts were light as a pay-roll. And there met them in the way the Hideous Dressing Gown, and the dozen Tin Spoons, and the Odd Slippers, and the square of Oil Cloth, and the Three Old Books, and the Kitchen Chair, THE PARSON S WIFE. -568 MARK TWALV'S LIBRARY t>/ HUMOR. and the Yard of Flannel, and the Cotton Tidy, and the Bag of Crackers, and the Awful Pen Wiper, and the Button Hook, and the Bar of Soap, and all the Things. And when they saw them they raised a mighty shout, insomuch that the watchmen of the city were awaked, and one said to another: . " Lo! a noise; let us hasten away, lest we be called in." For the watchmen of the city wist not what the racket was, and the}' were afraid, which of a verity was their normal con- dition. And the Painted Pine Pail called unto the others and said: '' Journey with our band, for we also go upon thine errand. Moreover, we likewise are going to the donation party." And they joined the band. And the Kitchen Chair said: " Of a surety there will be much good-cheer, for the matter is not a surprise, but the birds of the air carried the matter to the parsonage, and the parson's wife hath boiled and baked and brewed all day, that there might be an abundance of provisions and cakes of fine meal and of barley, and oil and wme, and ice cream and grapes, and White Mountain cake and Lady Jane Washington pie, and all that is good and expensive, for after this manner doth always the parson's wife do when she heareth of a donation party." " It will be the swell feed of all swell feeds," said the Odd Slipper. And he was right. "It will be the boss lay-out," said also the other Odd Slipper. And he likewise was right. They were both rights. And they began to make merry. And when they were come mto the parsonage, they made as though they would enter m at the gates, but the gates were locked, as with a skein of telegraph wire. Now the same v/as barbed. And there came to the doors of the parsonage an holely Old Rag Carpet, and he rolled himself up and leaned against the door jamb. Now he was old and stricken in years. Often had he been beaten with rods, forty stripes plus a thousand and ten, and many times had he been put down, but as oft he got up and dusted the next spring. Neither was his natural force abated. Moreover, he carried a stair-rod in his hand, and spoke as one who meant business. And he said: "Slide ! Stay not upon the order of your going, but scatter. THE DONATION PARTY. 369 Vamoose ! Climb out of this. Verily, I was beaten but one day ago, and I am to be pasted down to-night, if peradventure I may hold on to the boards until next spring. It's bad enough that a salary of $500 a year compels me to be tacked down with mucilage; may the beasts of the field rant over me if I lie down to have this howling mob shuffle around on me and grind cake and bread crumbs into my long suffering pores. Stampede, or, by the doom of Jericho, I'll pass around the hat ! " And presently they began to fade down the dusky high- way. And the Things sat down by the roadside and cast dust upon their heads. And the Odd Slipper said: '* It seems that we are left." And he was right. And the other Odd Slipper said: "I should say left. Verily, we are distanced." And he also was right. They were all left. The fust thing a man duz in the morning, iz to feel for hiz pocket-book, and the fust thing a woman duz, iz to see if the locking-glass iz all right. Josh Billings. ^'''i* "i '1 370 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE ALLIGATOR. BY JOSH BILLINGS. The alligator iz an original kritter, a chip of the old block, and az ugly to kontemplate az a congo darkey. They are resi- dents ov Florida, and gro 12 feet and nine inches, and then halt. Their teeth are all tushes, and their mouth iz az full ov them az a buzz saw iz. Their eys are sot up and down in their hed like a chinamans, and they hav an appetight equal to 18 distrikt skool masters. They are the krokerdiles ov Amerika, and lay eggs az A TASTE FOR YOUNG DARKIES. eazy az a hen duz, but don't kackle when they cum oph from the nest. They are grate cowards, but ain't afrade ov yung pork, or little darkeys, and kan eat all the time, or go without eating, az long az a gold fish kan. The alligator waz made for sum usefull purpose, but like the muskeeter, the bedbugg and the kokroach, their usefullness haz been karephully hid from us. Yu kan shoot a hundred alligators a day on the St. Johns river, but you kant bag one, and thare aint enny more game in them than thare iz in a rotten log. They are long lived, and liv, if mi memory serves me right, 4 thousand years, and their grate strength lays in their tails. They hiss, when they are angry, like a tea kittle, and want az much room to turn round in az a fore and aft skooner. i^ III * ^ ^-^^■'^^' f^i PE TERKINS DECIDE TO LEARN THE LANG UA GES, 371 THE PETERKINS DECIDE TO LEARN THE LANGUAGES. BY LUCRETIA PEABODY HALE. T fUCRETIA PEABODY HALE is a well-known author, and the contribu- tor of many ingenious tales for young and old in the leading magazines. She was born at Boston in 1820, and is the sister of Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Certainly now was the time to study the languages. The Peterkins had moved into a new house, far more convenient than their old one, where they would have a place for everything, and everything in its place. Of course they would then have more time. Elizabeth Eliza recalled the troubles of the old house ; how for a long time she was obliged to sit outside of the window upon the piazza, when she wanted to play on her piano. Mrs. Peterkin reminded them of the difficulty about the table- cloths. The upper table-cloth was kept in a trunk that had to stand in front of the door to the closet under the stairs. But the under table-cloth was kept in a drawer in the closet. So, when- ever the cloths were changed, the trunk had to be pushed away under some projecting shelves to make room for opening the closet door (as the under table-cloth must be taken out first), then the trunk was pushed back to make room for it to be opened for the upper table-cloth, and, after all, it was necessary to push the trunk away again to open the closet-door for the knife-tray. This always consumed a great deal of time. Now that the china-closet was large enough, everything could find a place in it. Agamemnon especially enjoyed the new library. In the old house there was no separate room for books. The dictionaries were kept up-stairs, which was very inconvenient, and the volumes of the Encyclopaedia could not be together. There was not room for all in one place. So from A to P were to be found down-stairs, and from Q to Z were scattered in different rooms up-stairs. And the worst of it was, you could never remember whether from A to P included P. " I always went up-stairs after 11^ J^. JIU 370 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE ALLIGATOR. BY JOSH BILUNGS. The alligator iz an original kritter, a chip of the old block, and az ugly to kontemplate az a congo darkey. They are resi- dents ov Florida, and gro 12 feet and nine inches, and then halt. Their teeth are all tushes, and their mouth iz az full ov them az a buzz saw iz. Their eys are sot up and down in their hed like a chinamans, and they hav an appetight equal to 18 distrikt skool masters. They are the krokerdiles ov Amerika, and lay eggs az A TASTE FOR YOUNG DARKIES. eazy az a hen duz, but don't kackle when they cum oph from the nest. They are grate cowards, but ain't afrade ov yung pork, or little darkeys, and kan eat all the time, or go without eating, az long az a gold fish kan. The alligator waz made for sum usefull purpose, but like the muskeeter, the bedbugg and the kokroach, their usefullness haz been karephully hid from us. Yu kan shoot a hundred alligators a day on the St. Johns river, but you kant bag one, and thare aint enny more game in them than thare iz in a rotten log. They are long lived, and liv, if m.i memory ser\'es me right, 4 thousand years, and their grate strength lays in their tails. They hiss, when they are angry, like a tea kittle, and want az much room to turn round in az a fore and aft skooner. PETERKINS DECIDE TO LEARN THE LANGUA GES. 371 THE PETERKINS DECIDE TO LEARN THE LANGUAGES. BY LUCRETIA PEABODY HALE. T fUCRETIA PEABODY HALE is a well-known author, and the contribu- tor of many ingenious tales for young and old in the leading magazines. She was born at Boston in 1820, and is the sister of Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Certainly now was the time to study the languages. The Peterkins had moved into a new house, far more convenient than their old one, where they would have a place for everything, and everything in its place. Of course they would then have more time. Elizabeth Eliza recalled the troubles of the old house ; how for a long time she was obliged to sit outside of the window upon the piazza, when she wanted to play on her piano. Mrs. Peterkin reminded them of the difficulty about the table- cloths. The upper table-cloth was kept in a trunk that had to stand in front of the door to the closet under the stairs. But the under table-cloth was kept in a drawer in the closet. So, when- ever the cloths were changed, the trunk had to be pushed away under some projecting shelves to make room for opening the closet door (as the under table-cloth must be taken out first), then the trunk was pushed back to make room for it to be opened for the upper table-cloth, and, after all, it was necessary to push the trunk away again to open the closet-door for the knife-tray. This always consumed a great deal of time. Now that the china-closet was large enough, everything could find a place in it. Agamemnon especially enjoyed the new library. In the old house there was no separate room for books. The dictionaries were kept up-stairs, which was very inconvenient, and the volumes of the Encyclopaedia could not be together. There was not room for all in one place. So from A to P were to be found down-stairs, and from Q to Z were scattered in different rooms up-stairs. And the worst of it was, you could never remember whether from A to P included P. " I always went up-stairs after 372 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. & P," said Agamemnon, "and then always found it down- stairs, or else it was the other way." Of course, now there were more conveniences for study. With the books all in one room there would be no time wasted in look- ing for them. Mr. Peterkin suggested they should each take a separate lan- guage. If they went abroad, this would prove a great conveni- ence. Elizabeth Eliza could talk French with the Parisians; Agamemnon, German with the Germans; Solomon John, Italian with the Italians; Mrs. Peterkin, Spanish in Spain; and perhaps he could himself master all the Eastern languages and Russian. Mrs. Peterkin was uncertain about undertaking the Spanish; but all the family felt very sure they should not go to Spain (as Elizabeth Eliza dreaded the Inquisition), and Mrs. Peterkin felt more willing. Still she had quite an objection to going abroad. She had always said she would not go till a bridge was made across the Atlantic, and she was sure it did not look like it now. Agamemnon said there was no knowing. There was some- thing new every day, and a bridge was surely not harder to invent than a telephone, for they had bridges in the very earliest days. Then came up the question of the teachers. Probably these could be found in Boston. If they could all come the same day, three could be brought out in the carryall. Agamemnon could go in for them., and could learn a little on the way out and in. Mr. Peterkin made some inquiries about the Oriental languages. He was told that Sanscrit was at the root of all. So he proposed they should all begin with Sanscrit. They would thus require but one teacher, and could branch out into the other languages afterward. But the family preferred learning the separate languages. Elizabeth Eliza already knew something of the French. She had tried to talk it, without much success, at the Centennial Exhibi- tion, at one of the side stands. But she found she had been talking with a Moorish gentleman who did not understand French. Mr. Peterkin feared they might need more libraries if all the teachers came at the same hour; but Agamemnon reminded him that they would be using different dictionaries. And Mr. Peter- kin thought something might be learned by having them all at once. Each one might pick up something besides the language PETERKINS DECIDE TO LEARN THE LANGUAGES. 375 gentleman into the same carriage with the teacher of Arabic, for he was a Turk, sitting with a fez on his head, on tlie back seat ! They glared at each other, and began to assail each other in every language they knew, none of which Mr. Peterkin could understand It might be Russian ; it might have been Arabic. It was easy to understand that they would never consent to sit in the same carriage. Mr. Peterkin was in despair; he had forgotten about the Russian war ! What a mistake to have invited the Turk ! Quite a crowd collected on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. But the French gentleman politely, but stiffly, invited the Russian to go v/ith him in the first carryall. Here was another difficulty. For the German pro- fessor was quietly ensconced on the back seat ! As soon as the French gentleman put his foot on the step and saw him, he ad- dressed him in such '7| forcible language that the German professor got out of the /door the other side, ^nd came round on the sidewalk and took him by the collar. Cer- tainly the German and French gentlemen could not be put together, and more crowd collected ! Agamemnon, however, had happily studied up the German word " Herr," and he applied it to the German, inviting him by signs to take a seat in the other carryall. The German con- sented to sit by the Turk, as they neither of them could under- stand the other; and at last they started, Mr. Peterkin v.'ith the Italian by his side, and the French and Russian teachers behind, vociferating to each other in languages unknown to Mr. Peterkin, while he feared they were not perfectly in harmony; so he drove home as fast as possible. Agamemnon had a silent party. The Spaniard at his side was a little moody, while the Turk and the German behind did not utter a word. NOT FRIENDLY. 376 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. At last they reached the house, and were greeted by Mrs. Peterkin and Elizabeth Eliza, Mrs. Peterkin with her llama lace shawl over her shoulders, as a tribute to the Spanish teacher. Mr. Peterkin was careful to take his party in first, and deposit them in a distant part of the library, far from the Turk or the German, even putting the Frenchman and Russian apart. Solomon John found the Italian dictionary, and seated himself by his Italian; Agamemnon, with the German dictionary, by the German. The little boys took their copy of the "Arabian Nights " to the Turk. Mr. Peterkin attempted to explain to the Russian that he had no Russian dictionary, as he had hoped to learn Sanscrit of him, while Mrs. Peterkin was trying to inform her teacher that she had no books in Spanish. She got over all fears of the Inquisition, he looked so sad, and she tried to talk a little, using English words, but very slowly, and altering the accent as far as she knew how. The Spaniard bowed, looked gravely interested, and was very polite. Elizabeth Eliza, meanwhile, was trying her grammar phrases with the Parisian. She found it easier to talk French than to understand him. But he understood perfectly her sentences. She repeated one of her vocabularies, and went on with, " J'ai le livre." " As-tu le pain ?" " L'enfant a une poire." He listened with great attention, and replied slowly. Suddenly she started, after making out one of his sentences, and went to her mother to whisper, "They have made the mistake you feared. They think they are invited to lunch ! He has just been thanking me for our politeness in inviting them to dejeuner — that means breakfast ! " "They have not had their breakfast! " exclaimed Mrs. Peter- Tcin, looking at her Spaniard; "he does look hungry! What shall we do?" Elizabeth Eliza was consulting her father. What should they do ? How should they make them understand that they invited them to teach, not lunch. Elizabeth Eliza begged Agamemnon to look owX. '■'■ apprendre'' in the dictionary. It must mean to teach. Alas, they found it means both to teach and to learn! What should they do ? The foreigners were now sitting silent in their different corners. The Spaniard grew mor^ and more sallow. What if he should faint? The Frenchman was rolling up each of his mustaches to a point as he gazed at the German. What if PETER KINS DECIDE TO LEARN THE LANGUAGES. 2,77 the Russian should fight the Turk ? What if the German should be exasperated by the airs of the Parisian ? "We must give them something to eat," said Mr. Peterkin, in a low tone. " It would calm them." "If I only knew what they were used to eating !" said Mrs. Peterkin. Solomon John suggested that none of them knew what the others were used to eating, and they might bring in anything. Mrs. Peterkin hastened out with hospitable intents. Amanda could make good coffee. Mr. Peterkin had suggested some American dish. Solomon John sent a little boy for some olives. It was not long before the coffee came 'in, and a dish of baked beans. Next, some olives and a loaf of bread, and some boiled eggs, and some bottles of beer. The effect was astonishing. Every man spoke his own tongue, and fluently. Mrs. Peterkin poured out coffee for the Spaniard, while he bowed to her. They all liked beer; they all liked olives. The Frenchman was fluent about ^^ les incRurs Amencai?ics." Elizabeth Eliza supposed he alluded to their not having set any table. The Turk smiled; the Russian was voluble. In the midst of the clang of the different languages, just as Mr. Peterkin was again repeating, under cover of the noise of many tongues, " How shall we make them understand that we want them to teach ? " — at this moment the door was flung open, and there came in the lady from Philadel- phia, that day arrived, her first call of the season. She started back in terror at the tumult of so many different languages. The family, with joy, rushed to meet her. All together they called upon her to explain for them Could she help them ? Could she tell the foreigners that they wanted to take lessons ? Lessons ? They had no sooner uttered the word than their guests all started up with faces beaming with joy. It was the one English word they all knew! They had come to Boston to ^.ive lessons! The Russian traveler had hoped to learn English in this way. The thought pleased them more than the de'jefiner. Yes, gladly would they give lessons. The Turk smiled at the idea. The first step was taken. The teachers knew they were expected to teach. ^ ■^■^. #.. ^'^ -^ 't^'^.^^-tkt'^^-^^^SF.' ,;^ i 3/6 MAK/TWALV'S UBRARY OF IIVMOR. At last thty i iched the house, and were greeted Peterkin and Eli/)eth Eliza, Mrs. Peterkin with her llai shawl over lier N:)ulders, as a tribute to the Spanish t Ml. Peterkin \va areful to take his jjarty in first, and them in a distant art of the library, far from the German, even putng the Frenchman and Russian Solomon John and the Italian dictionary, and s^ by his Italian; Aimemnon. with the German dictidi German. I'hc lie lx)ys took their copy of the Nights " to the 1 k. Mr. Peterkin attempted to cxplaii Russian that he id no Russian dictionary, as he had learn Sanscrit of m, while Mrs. Peterkin was trying to her teacher that le had no l)ooks in S|)anish. She got over' fears of the Incjuition, he looked so sad, and she tried to tal little, using En; .h words, but very slowly, and altering accent as far as le knew how. The Sjwniard bowed, look gravely interests and was ver)' polite. Elizabeth Eli. meanwhile, was trying ncr grammar phras. with the Parisiai She found it easier to talk French than ' understand him. But he understood perfectly her sentence She repeated onof her vocabularies, and went on with, " J'ai 1 livre." " As-tu l]5ain ?" " L'enfant a une poire." He listened with great atteiiDn, and replied slowly. Suddenly she started, after making or one of his sentences, and went to her mother to whisper, "Tl ' have made the mistake you feared. They think they are /ited to lunch ! Hf has just been thanking me for our poliness in inviting them to d/jditur — that means breakfast ! " "They have n: had their breakfast! " exclaimed Mrs. Peter- Tcin, looking at Ir Spaniard; "he does look hungry! What shall we do?" Elizabeth Eli/' was consulting her father. What should they do? How shoul they make them understand that they invited them to teach, n. lunch. Elizabeth Eliza begged Agamemnon to look out '' a/vendre" in the dictionary. It must mean to teach. Alas, thr found it means both to teach and to learn! What should the do ? The foreigners were now sitting silent in their different cciers. The Spaniard grew mor* and more sallow. What if he shoul faint ? The Frenchman was rolling up each of his mustacheso a point as he gazed at the German. What if ...1 : K be exasK^ '^- Soi ^ ac: c- tna: • r i . _ i-^r. 1.;. tht u:::ji._ smiisc; a: :.. knew they wcrt rv: Or I 378 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE SIAMESE TWINS. BY MARK TWAIN. I DO not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning them, which, belonging only to their private life, have never crept into print. Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well qualified for the task I have taken upon myself. The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate in P A / I '/ THEV ALWAYS PLAYED TOGETHER. disposition, and have clung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and eventful life. Even as children they were inseparable companions; and it was noticed that they always seemed to prefer each other's society to that of any other per- sons. They nearly always played together; and so accustomed was their mother to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them — satisfied that when she found that one she would find his brother somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. And yet these creatures were ignorant and unlettered — barbarians themselves, and the offspring of barbarians, who knew not the light of phi- THE SIAMESE TWINS. -i -Trw losophy and science. What a withering rebuke is this to our boasted civilization, with its quarrelings, its wranglings, and its "«parations of brothers ! As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still, there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go away from each other and dwell apart. They have even occupied the same house, as a general thing, and it is believed that they have never failed to even sleep together on any night since they were born. How surely do the habits of a lifetime become second nature to us ! The Twins always go to bed at the same time; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before his brother. By an understanding between themselves, Chang does all the in-door work and Eng runs all the errands. This is because Eng likes to go out; Chang's habits are sedentary. However, Chang always goes along. Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic; still, to please his brother, Chang consented to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on condition that it should not " count." During the war they were strong partisans, and both fought gallantly all through the great struggle — Eng on the Union side, and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly balanced in favor of each, that a general army court had to be assembled to deter- mine which one was properly the captor, and which the captive. The jury was unable to agree for a long time; but the vexed question was finally decided by agreeing to consider them both prisoners, and then exchanging them. At one time Chang was convicted of disobedience of orders, and sentenced to ten days in the guard-house, but Eng, in spite of all arguments, felt obliged to share his imprisonment, notwithstanding he himself was entirely innocent; and so, to save the blameless brother from suffering, they had to discharge both from custody — the just reward of faithfulness. Upon one occasion the brothers fell out about something, and Chang knocked Eng down, and then tripped and fell on him; whereupon both clinched, and began to beat and gouge each other without mercy. The bystanders interfered, and tried to separate them, but they could not do it, and so allowed them to fight it out. In the end both were disabled, and were carried ta the ho.soital on one and the same shutter. 380 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Their ancient habit of going always together had its drawbacks when they reached man's estate, and entered upon the luxury of courting. Both fell in love with the same girl. Each tried to steal clandestine interviews with her, but at the critical moment the other would always turn up. By and by Eng saw, with dis- traction, that Chang had won the girl's affections; and from that day forth he had to bear with the agony of being a witness to all their dainty billing and cooing. But with a magnanimity that did him infinite credit, he succumbed to his fate, and gave countenance and encouragement to a state of things that bade fair to sunder his generous heart-strings. He sat from seven every evening until two in the morning, listening to the fond fool- ishness of the two lovers, and to the concussion of hundreds of squandered kisses — for the privilege of sharing only one of which he would have given his right hand. But he sat patiently, and waited and gaped and yawned and stretched, and longed for two o'clock to come. And he took long walks with the lovers on moonlight evenings — sometimes traversing ten miles, notwith- standing he was usually suffering from rheumatism. He is an inveterate smoker; but he could not smoke on these occasions, because the young lady was painfully sensitive to the smell of tobacco. Eng cordially wanted them married, and done with it; but although Chang often asked the momentous question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it while Eng was by. However, on one occasion, after having walked some sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the noble brother-in-law. His unwaver- ing faithfulness was the theme of every tongue. He had stayed by them all through their long and arduous courtship; and when at last they were married, he lifted his hands above their heads, and said, with impressive unction, "Bless ye, my children; I will never desert ye !" and he kept his word. Fidelity like this is all too rare in this cold world. By and by Eng fell in love with his sister-in-law's sister, and married her, and since that day they have all lived together, night and day, in an exceeding sociability which is touching and beautiful to behold, and is a scathing rebuke to our boasted civil- ization. A FATAL THIRST. 383 A FATAL THIRST. BY BILL NYE. /7'DGAR WILSON NYE was born August 21, 1850, in Penobscot County, ^^ Maine, but went early to the West, with which section his humor and his fortunes were long identified. His contributions to the press have given him a reputation commensurate with the country. From the London Lancet we learn that " many years ago a case was recorded by. Dr. Otto, of Copenhagen, in which 495 needles passed through the skin of a hysterical girl, who had probably swallowed them during a hysterical paroxysm, but these all emerged from the regions below the diaphragm, and were col- lected in groups, which gave rise to inflammatory swellings of some size. One of these contained 100 needles. Quite recently Dr. Bigger described before the Society of Surgery, of Dublin, a case in which more than 300 needles were removed from the iDody of a woman. It is very remarkable in how few cases the needles were the cause of death, and how slight an interfer- ence with function their presence and movement cause." It would seem, from the cases on record, that needles in the system rather assist in the digestion and promote longevity. For instance, we will suppose that the hysterical girl above alluded to, with 495 needles in her stomach, should absorb the midsummer cucumber. Think how interesting those needles would make it for the great colic promoter ! We can imagine the cheerful smile of the cucumber as it enters the stomach, and, bowing cheerfully to the follicles standing around, hangs its hat upon the walls of the stomach, stands its umbrella in a corner, and proceeds to get in its work. All at once the cucumber looks surprised and grieved about something. It stops in its heaven-born colic generation, and pulls a rusty needle out of its person. Maddened by the pain, it once more attacks the digestive apparatus, and once more accumu- lates a choice job lot of needles. Again and again it enters into the unequal contest, each time losing ground and gaining ground, till the poor cucumber, with 384 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. assorted hardware sticking out in all directions, like the hair on a cat's tail, at last curls up like a caterpillar, and yields up the victory. Still, this needle business will be expensive to husbands, if wives once acquire the habit and allow it to obtain the mastery over them. If a wife once permits this demon appe- tite for cambric needles to get control of the house, it will soon secure a majority in the senate, and then there will be trouble. The woman who once begins to tamper with cambric needles is not safe. She may think that she has power to control her appetite, but it is only a step to the madden- ing thirst for the soul- destroying darning- needle, and perhaps to the button-hook and carpet-stretcher. It is safer and better to crush the first desire for needles, than, when it is too late, to under- take reformation from the abject slavery to this hellish thirst. We once knew a sweet young creature, with dewy eye and breath like timothy hay. Her merry laugh rippled out upon the summer air like the joyful music of bald- headed bobolinks. Everybody loved her, and she loved everybody too. But in a thoughtless moment she swallowed a cambric needle. This did not satisfy her. The cruel thraldom had begun. Whenever she felt depressed and gloomy, there was ..othing that would kill her amui and melancholy but the fatal needle-cushion. A TASTE FOR KEEDLES. MRS. BROWN'S FATE. 385 From this she rapidly became more reckless, till there was hardly an hour that she was not under the influence of needles. It she couldn't get needles to assuage her mad thirst, she would take hair-pins or door-keys. She gradually pined away to a mere skeleton. She could no longer sit on one foot and be happy. Life for her was filled with opaque gloom and sadness. At last she took an overdose of sheep-shears and monkey-wrenches one day, and on the following morning her soul had lit out for the land of eternal summer. We should learn from this to shun the maddening needle-cush- ion as we would a viper, and never tell a lie. MRS. BROWN'S FATE. Old Mrs. Bently — Have ye heerd anything about Mrs. Brown, lately, Obadiah? Old Mr. Bently — She died several days ago. I thought ye knew that ? Old Mrs. Bently — I never heard of it. Poor soul; an' so she's dead ! Old Mr. Bently — Yes, dead an' buried. Old Mrs. Bently — And buried, too ! Oh, my ; wuss an' wuss! ■ — Newspaper. 386 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. CAPTAIN BEN'S CHOICE. BY FRANCIS LEE PRATT. An old red house on a rocky shore, with a fisherman's blue boat rocking on the bay, and two white sails glistening far away over the water. Above, the blue, shining sky; and below, the blue, shining sea. " It seems clever to have a pleasant day," said Mrs. Davids, sighing. Mrs. Davids said everything v/ith a sigh, and now she wiped her eyes also on her calico apron. She was a woman with a complexion like faded seaweed, who seemed al- ways pitying herself. "I tell them," said she, "I have had real hard iuok. My husband is bur- ied away off in California, and my son died in Neither one of MRS. JJAVIDS AND MISS TAME. the army, and he is buried away down South them is buried together." Then she sighed again. Twice, this time. " And so," she continued, taking out a pinch of bayberry snuff, " I am left alone in the world. Alone, I say ! why, I've got a daughter, but she is away out West. She is married to an engineerman. And I've got two grandchildren." Mrs. Davids took the pinch of bayberry and shook her head, looking as though that was the *' hardest luck " of all. CAPTAIN BEN'S CHOICE. '> 87 " Well, everybody has to have their pesters, and you'll have to have yours," rejoined Miss Persis Tame, taking a pinch of snuff — the real Maccaboy — twice as large, with twice as fierce an action. " I don't know what it is to bury children, nor to lose a husband ; I s'pose I don't ; but I know what it is to be jammed round the world and not have a ruff to stick my head under. I wish I had all the money I ever spent traveling — and thafs twelve dollars ! " she continued, regretfully. " Why in the world don't you marry, and have a home of your own ? " sighed Mrs. Davids. "Well, I don't expect to marry. I don't know as I do, at my time of life," responded the spinster. " I rather guess my day for chances is gone by." " You ain't such a dreadful sight older than I am, though," replied Mrs. Davids, reflectively. " Not so old by two full years," returned Miss Tame, taking another smart pinch of snuff, as though it touched the empty spot in her heart and did it good. " But you ain't looking out for opportunities yet, I suppose ? " Mrs. Davids sighed evasively. "We can't tell what is before us. There is more than one man in want of a wife." As though to point her words, Captain Ben Lundy came in sight on the beach, his head a long way forward and his sham- bling feet trying in vain to keep up. "Thirteen months and a half since Lyddy was buried," con- tinued Mrs. Davids, accepting this application to her words, "and there is'Captain Ben taking up with just what housekeeper he can get, and no housekeeper at all. It would be an excellent home for you, Persis. Captain Ben always had the name of making a kind husband." She sighed again, whether from regret for the bereaved*man, or for the multitude of women bereft of such a husband. By this time Captain Ben's head was at the door. "Morning!" said he, while his feet were coming up. "Quite an accident down here below the lighthouse last night. Schooner ran ashore in the blow, and broke all up into kindlipg-wood in less than no time. Captain Tisdale's been out looking for dead bodies ever since daylight." ** I knowed it!" sighed Mrs. Davids. "I heard a rushing sound some time about the breali uf day, that waked me out of a 388 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. sound sleep, and I knowed then there was a spirit leaving its body. I heard it the night Davids went, or I expect I did. It must have been very nearly at that time." " Well, I guess it wasn't a spirit, last night," said Captain Ben, " for, as I was going on to say, after searching back and forth, Captain Tisdale came upon the folks, a man and a boy, rolled up in their wet blankets, asleep behind the lifeboat house. He said he felt like he could shake them for staying out in the wet. Wrecks always make for the lighthouse, so he s'posed those ones were drowned to death, sure enough." " O, then it couldn't have been them I was warned of!" returned Mrs. Davids, looking as though she regretted it. " It was right over my head, and I waked up just as the thing was rushing past. You haven't heard, have you," she continued, "whether or no there was any other damage done by the gale ? " " I don't know whether you would call it damage exactly," returned Captain Ben; "butLoizah Mullers got so scared she left me and went home. She said she couldn't stay and run the chance of another of our coast blows, and off she trapsed." Mrs. Davids sighed like November. " So you have some hard luck, as well as myself. I don't suppose you can get a house- keeper, to keep her long," said she, dismally. " Abel Grimes tells me it is enough sight easier getting wives than housekeepers, and I'm some of a mind to try that tack," replied Captain Ben, smiling grimly. Mrs. Davids put up her hand to feel of her back hair, and smoothed down her apron; while Miss Persis Tame blushed like a withered rose, and turned her eyes modestly out of the windo\f. " I am so f But the difficulty is, who will it be ? There are so many to select from, it is fairly bothersome," continued Captain Ben, winking fast, and looking as though he was made of dry corn-cobs and hay. Miss Persis Tame turned about ai.)ruptly. "The land alive! " she ejaculated, with such sudden emphasis that the dishes shook on their shelves and Captain Ben in his chair. " It makes me as mad as a March hare to hear men go on as though all they'd got to do was to throw down their handkerchers to a CAPTAIN BEN'S CHOICE. -> 89 woman, and, no matter who, she'd spring and run to pick it up. It is always, ' Who will I marry ? ' and not, ' Who will marry me ? ' " "Why, there is twice the number of widders that there is of widderers here at the P'int. That was what was in my mind," said Captain Ben, in a tone of meek apology. " There is the Widow Keens, she that was Azubah Muchmore. I don't know but what she would do; Lyddy used to think everything of her, and she is a first-rate of a housekeeper." "Perhaps so," assented Mrs. Davids, dubiously. " But she is troubled a sight with the head complaint; I suppose you know she is. That is against her." "Yes," assented Miss Tame. " The Muchmores all have weak heads. And, too, the Widow Keens, she's had a fall lately. She was up in a chair cleaning her top buttery shelf, and somehow one of the chair legs give way — it was loose or something, I expect — and down she went her whole heft. She keeps about, but she goes with two staves." " I want to know it that is so !" said Captain Ben, his honest soul warming with sudden sympathy. " The widder has seen a sight of trouble." "Yes, she has lived through a good deal, that woman has. I couldn't live through so much, 'pears to me; but we don't know what we can live through," rejoined Miss Tame. Captain Ben did not reply, but his ready feet began to move to and fro restlessly; for his heart, more ready yet, had already gone out toward the unfortunate widow. "It is so- bad for a woman to be alone," said he to himself, shambling along the shingly beach a moment after. "Nobody to mend her chairs, or split up her kindlings, or do a chore for her; and she lame into the bargain ! It is too bad !" " He has steered straight for the widow Keens' s, as sure as A is apple-dumpling," remarked Miss Persis, peering after him from the window. " Well, I must admit I wouldn't have thought of Captain Ben's being en-a-mored after such a sickly piece of business. But men never know what they want. Won't you just hand me that gum-camphyer bottle, now you are up ? It is on that chest of drawers behind you." " No more they don't," returned Miss Tame, with a plaintive 390 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. cadence, taking a sniff from the camphor-bottle on the way. " However, I don't begrutch him to her — I don't know as I do. It will make her a good hum, though, if she concludes to make arrangements." Meantime, Captain Ben Lundy's head was wellnigh at Mrs. Keens's door, for it was situated only around the first sand-hill. She lived in a little bit of a house that looked as though it had been knocked together for a crockery- crate in the first place, with two windows and a rude door thrown in as after-thoughts. In the rear of this house was another tiny building, something like a grown-up hen-coop ; and this was where Mrs. Keens car- ried on the business bequeathed to her by her deceased husband, along with five small chi'dren, and one not so small. But, worse than that, one who was " not altogether there," as the English say. She was about this business now, dressed in a primitive sort of bloomer, with a washtub and clothes-wringer before her, and an army of bathing-suits of every kind and color flapping wildly ia the fresh sea air at one side. From a little farther on, mingling with the sound of the beat- ing surf, came the merry voices of bathers — boarders at the great hotels on the hill. *' Here you be ! Hard at it ! " said Captain Ben, puffing around the corner like a portable west wind. " I've understood you've had a hurt. Is that so ? " " Oh, no ! Nothing to mention," returned Mrs. Keens, turning about a face bright and cheerful as the full moon ; and throwing, as by accident, a red bathing-suit over the two broomsticks that leaned against her tub. Unlike Mrs. Davids, Mrs. Keens neither pitied herself nor would allov/ anybody else to do so. " Sho ! " remarked Captain Ben, feeling defrauded. He had counted on sacrificing himself to his sympathies, but he didn't give up yet. "You must see some pretty tough times, 'pears to me. with such a parcel of little ones, and only yourself to look to," said he, proceeding awkwardly enough to hang the pile of wrung-out clothes upon an empty line. "I don't complain," returned the widow, bravely. " ]My children are not teusome ; and Jack, why, you would be surprised to see how many things Jack can do, for all he isn't quite right."' CAPTAIN BEN'S CHOICE. 391 As she spoke thus with affectionate pride, Jack came up wheeling a roughly made cart, filled with wet bathing-clothes, from the beach. He looked up at the sound of his mother's voice with something of the dumb tenderness of an intelligent dog. "Jack helps, Jack good boy," said he, nodding with a happy smile. "Yes, Jack helps. We don't complain," repeated the mother. " It would come handy, though, to have a man around to see PICKING BARBERRIES. to things and kind o' provide, wouldn't it, though ? " persisted Captain Ben. " Some might think so," replied Mrs. Keens, stopping her wringer to reflect a little. " But I haven't any wish to change my situation," she added, decidedly, going on again with her work. " Sure on't ? " persisted the Captain. "Certain," replied the widow. Captain Ben sighed. " T thought ma'be you was having a hard row to hoe, and I thoughts like enough — " What, he never said, excepting by a beseeching glance at the cheerful widow, for just then an interruption came from some people after bathing-suits. So Captain Ben moved off with a dismal countenance. But 392 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. before he had gone far it suddenly brightened. " It might not be for the best," quoth he to himself. " Like enough not. I was very careful not to commit myself, and I am very glad I didn't." He smiled as he reflected on his judicious wariness. " But, however," he continued, "I might as well finish up this business now. There is Rachel Doolittle. Who knows but she'd make a likely wife ! Lyddy sot a good deal by her. She never had a quilting or a sewing-bee but what nothing would do but she must give Rachel Doolittle an invite. Yes ; I wonder I never decided on her before! She will be glad of a home, sure enough, for she haves to live around, as it were, upon her brothers." Captain Ben's feet quickened themselves at these thoughts, and had almost overtaken his head, when behold ! at a sudden turn in the road there stood Miss Rachel Doolittle, picking bar- berries from a wayside bush. " My sakes ! If she ain't right here, like Rachel in the Bible ! " ejaculated Captain Ben, taking heart at the omen. Miss Doolittle looked up from under her tied-down brown hat in surprise at such a salutation. But her surprise was increased by Captain Ben's next remark. " It just came into my mind," said he, " that you was the right one to take Lyddy's place. You two used to be such great knit- ups that it will seem 'most like having Lyddy back again. No," he continued, after a little reflection, " I don't know of anybody I had rather see sitting in Lyddy's chair and wearing Lyddy's things than yourself." " Dear me. Captain Lundy, I couldn't think of it. Paul's folks expect me to stay with them while the boarder-season lasts, and I've as good as promised Jacob's wife I'll spend the winter with her." "Ain't that a hard life you are laying out for yourself ? And then, bum by you will get old or sick, ma'be, and who is going to want you around then ? Every woman needs a husband of her own to take care of her." " I'm able to take care of myself as yet, thanks to goodness ! And I am not afraid my brothers will see me suffer in case of sickness," returned ]\Iiss Doolittle, her cheeks flaming up like a sumach in October. "But hadn't you better take a little time to think it over ? Ma'be it come sudden to you," pleaded Captain Ben, CAPTAIN BEN'S CHOICE. "No, I thank you; some things don't need thinking over," answered Miss Doolittle, plucking at the barberries more dili- gently than ever. * 1 wish Lyddy was here. She would convince you you are standing in your own Hght," returned Lyddy's widower in a per- plexed tone. " I don't need one to come from the dead to show me my own mind," retorted Miss Doolittle, firmly. "Well, like enough you are right," said Captain Ben, mildly, putting a few stems of barberries in her pail ; " ma'be 'twouldn't be best. I don't want to be rash," And with that he moved off, on the whole congratulating him- self he had not decided to marry Miss Doolittle. " I thought, after she commenced her miserable gift of the gab, that Lyddy used to be free to admit she had a fiery tongue, for all they were such friends. And I'm all for peace myself. I guess, on the whole, ma'be she ain't the one for me, perhaps, and it is as well to look further. Why, what in the world ! Well, there, what have I been thinking of ! There is Mrs. Davids, as neat as a new cent, and the master hand to save. She is always taking on ; and she will be glad enough to have somebody to look out for her — why, sure enough ! And there I was, right at her house this very day, and never once thought of her ! What an old dunce ! " But, fortunately, this not being a sin of ^^//zmission, it could easily be rectified ; and directly Captain Ben had turned about and was trotting again toward the red house on the beach. "Pound for pound of the best white sugar," he heard Miss Tame say as he neared the door. "White sugar !" repeated Mrs. Davids, her usual sigh drawn out into a little groan. " White sugar for ^r«;/;/berries ! Who ever heard of such a thing ! I've always considered I did well when i had plenty of brown." " Poor crceter! " thought Captain Ben. " How she will enjoy getting into my pantry. Lyddy never complained that she didn't have enough of everything to do with." And in the full ardor of his intended benevolence, he went right in and opened the subject at once. But, to his astonish- ment, Mrs. Davids refused him. She sighed, but she refused him. 394 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. "I've seen trouble enough a'ready, without my rushing into more with my eyes wide open," sighed she. " Trouble ? Why, that is just what I was meaning to save you! " exclaimed the bewildered widower. " Pump right in the house, and stove e'enamost new. And Lyddy never knew what it was to want for a spoonful of sugar or a pound of flour. And such a handy buttery and sink! Lyddy used to say she felt the worst about leaving her buttery of anything." " Should thought she would," answered Mrs. Davids, forget- ting to sigh. " However, I can't say that I feel any hankering after marrying a buttery. I 've got buttery-room enough here, ■without the trouble of getting set up in a new place." "Just as you say," returned the rejected. "I ain't sure as you'd be exactly the one. I 7vas a thinking of looking for some- body a little younger." "Well, here is Persis Tame. Why don't you bespeak her? She is younger, and she is in need of a good home. I can recommend her, too, as the first-rate of a cook," remarked Mrs. Davids, benevolently. Miss Tame had been sitting a little apart by the open window, smiling to herself. But now she turned about at once. "H'm!" said she, with contempt. " I should rather live under an umbrella tied to a stake, than marry for a hum." So Captain Ben went home without engaging either wife or housekeeper. And the first thing he saw was Captain Jacob Doolittle's old one-eyed horse eating the apples Loizah Mullers had strung and festooned from nails against the house, to dry. The next thing he saw was, that, having left a window open, the hens had flown in and gone to housekeeping on their own account. But they were not, like Mrs. Davids, as neat as a new cent, and not, also, such master hands to save. "Shoo! shoo! Get out! Go 'long there with you!" cried Captain Ben, waving the dish-cloth and the poker. " I declare for '"t! I most hadn't ought to have left that bread out on the table. They've made a pretty mess of it, and it is every spec there is in the house too. Well, I must make a do of potatoes for supper, with a bit of pie and a mouthful of cake." Accordingly he went to work building a fire that wouldn't burn. CAPTAIX BEN'S CHOICE. ^ge Then, forgetting the simple matter of dampers, the potatoes wouldn't bake. The tea-kettle boiled over and cracked the stove, and after that, boiled dry and cracked itself. Finally the pota- toes fell to baking with so much ardor they overdid it and burnt up. And, last of all, the cake-jar and pie-cupboard proved to be entirely empty. Loizah had left on the eve of baking-day, "The old cat! Well, I'd just as soon live on slapjacks a spell." said Captain Ben, when he made this discovery. But even slapjacks palled on his palate, especially when he had them always to cook for himself. "'Tain't no way to live, this ain't," said heat last. "I'm a good mind to marry as ever I had to eat." So he put on his hat and walked out. The first person he met was Miss Persis Tame, who turned her back and fell to picking thoroughwort blossoms as he came up. "Look a here," s^aid he, stopping short, "I'm dreadful put to 't! I can't get ne'er a wife nor ne'er a housekeeper, and I am e'enamost starved to death. I wish you would consent to marry with me, if you feel as if you could bring your mind to it. I am sure it would have been Lyddy's wish," Miss Tame smelt of the thoroughwort blossoms. "It comes pretty sudden on me," she replied. "I hadn't given the subject any thought. But you are to be pitied in your situation." " Yes. And I'm dreadful lonesome. I've always been used to having Lyddy to talk over things with, and I miss her a sight. And I don't know anybody that has her ways more than you have. You are a good deal such a built woman, and you have the same hitch to your shoulders when you walk. You've got something the same look to your eyes, too; I noticed it last Sunday in meeting-time," continued the widower, anxiously. " I do feel for you. A man alone is in a deplorable situation," replied Miss Tame. " I'm sure I'd do anything in my power to help yovi." "Well, marry with me then ! That is what I want. We could be real comfortable together. I'll go for the license this minute, and we'll be married right away," returned the impatient suitor. " You go up to Elder Crane's, and I'll meet you there as soon as I can fetch around." Then he hurried away, "without giving me a chance to say 3q6 mark TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. ' no.' " said " she that was " Persis Tame, afterward. " So I haa to marry with him, as you might say. But I've never seen cause to regret it. I've got a first-rate of a hum, and Captain Ben malves a first-rate of a husband. And no hain't he, I hope, found cause to regret it," she added, with a touch of wifely pride; " though I do expect he might have had his pick among al) the sino-le women at the Point ; but out of them all he chose n.e" THE MACKREL. BY JOSH BILLINGS. The mackrel iz a game fish. They ought te^^ \m. wu'i eduka- ted, for they are always in schools. They are very eazy to bite, and are caught with a piece ov old red flannel pettycoat tied onto a hook. They ain't the only kind ov fish that are caught by the same kind ov bait. Mackrel inhabit the sea, but those which inhabit the grocerys alwus taste to me az tho they had been born and fatted on salt. They want a good deal ov freshning before they are eaten, and want a good deal ov freshning afterward. If I can hav plenty ov mackrel for brekfasst i can generally make the other two meals out ov cold water. Mackrel are considered by menny folks the best fish that swims, and are called " the salt of the earth." A QUICK EYE FOR BUSINESS. 397 A QUICK EYE FOR BUSINESS. As one of the most prominent young burglars of San Francisco was walking out of court the other day, just after having secured an acquittal regarding his latest job by a prompt and business- like " divvy " with the powers that be, at the usual rates, a well- to do but anxious-looking stranger touched his arm and beck- oned him into a doorway. "You are * Teddy, the Ferret,' aren't you," asked the gentle- man; "the man who was tried to-day for safe-cracking ?" " Well, wot of it?" replied the house- breaker. " Why, just this — you'll excuse my speaking so low — but the fact is, I've come all the way from the San Joaquin to look up a party in your line of business." ■ " Have, eh !" «Yes — I — well, I've a little proposi- tion to make to you." " Exactly," said the Ferret calmly; " you're a bank cashier down in the foot-hills." "How did you know that?" stam- mered the gentleman, much amazed. " And your cash and accounts are to be gone over by the direc- tors on the first, and as you can't realize on your stocks, you want me to gag you some time next week, shoot your hat full of holes, find the combination in your breast pocket, and go through the safe in the regular way." " Great heavens, man ! how did you find all that out?" " Why, I guessed it. It's the regular thing, you know. Got three orders to attend to ahead of yours now, Lemme see! Can't do anything for you next week, but might give you Wed- nesday and Thursday of the week after. How'll that suit you ?" The cashier said he thought he could make that do, and in less than five minutes they had struck a bargain and arranged the whole affair. Even New York isn't much ahead of San Francisco in regard to modern conveniences. — N. V. World. TEDDY THE FERRET. 398 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE OWL-CRITIC. A Lesson to Fault-Finders. BY JAS. T. FIELDS. ^TAS. T. fields, the well-known publisher, of the house of Ticknor & Fields, was born at Portsmouth, N. H., in 1817. He went to Boston while still a boy, and was, almost to the day of his death, i38i, identified with its lite- rary history. He was the author of several volumes of verse and prose, and the editor of various posthumous collections — conspicuously those of De Quincey . From 1861 to 1872 he was the editor of The Atlantic Monthly. " Who stuffed that white owl ?" No one spoke in the shop: The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop; The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding The young man who blurted out such a blunt question; Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion; And the barber kept on shaving, *' Don't you see, Mister Brown," Cried the youth, with a frown, " How wrong the whole thing is, How preposterous each wing is, How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is — In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 't is! I make no apology; I've learned owl-eology. I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any deflections Arising from unskillful fingers that fail To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail. ]\Iister Brown! Mister Brown! Do take that bird down, Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!" And the barber kept on shaving. ^'V\Q studied o^\s. And other night fowls, And I tell you THE OWL-CRITIC. What I know to be true: An owl cannot roost With his limbs so unloosed; No owl in this world Ever had his claws curled, Ever had his legs slanted, Ever had his bill canted, Ever had his neck screwed Into that attitude. 399 A CRITIC. He can't do it, because *T is against all bird-laws. Anatomy teaches, Ornithology preaches An owl has a toe That can't turn out so! I've made the white owl my study for years. And to see such a job almost moves me to tears! Mister Brown, I'm amazed You should be so gone crazed As to put up a bird In that posture absurd! 400 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness; The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!" And the barber Kept on shaving. " Examine those eyes. I'm filled with surprise Taxidermists should pass Off on you such poor glass ; So unnatural they seem They'd make Audubon scream, And John Burroughs laugh To encounter such chaff. Do take that bird down ; Have him stuffed again, Brown !" And the barber kep^ on shaving. " With some sawdust and bark I would stuff in the dark An owl better than that, I could make an old hat Look more like an owl Than that horrid fowl. Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather. In fact, about him there's not one natural feather." Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch, The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch. Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic, And then fairly hooted, as if he should say: " Your learning's at fault this time, any way; Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray. I'm an owl ; you're another. Sir Critic, good-day !" And the barber kept on shaving. THE KIND-HEARTED SHE-EJ-EPRAiV 401 THE KIND-HEARTED SHE-ELEPHANT. BY GEO. T. LANIGAN. A KIND-HEARTED She-Elephant, while walking through the Jungle where the Spicy Breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's Isle, heedlessly set foot upon a Partridge, which she crushed to death within a few inches of the Nest containing its Callow Brood. "^^ MISPLACED KINDNESS. 'j ^^^^^"^ " Poor little things ! " said the generous Mammoth. " I have been .'' Mother myself, and my affection shall atone for the Fatal Co:i- sequences of my Neglect." So saying, she sat down upon the Orphaned Birds. Moral. — The above Teaches us What Hom.e is Without a Mother: also, that it is not every Person who should be intrusted v/ith the Care of an Orphan Asylum 402 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. A DOG IN CHURCH. BY MARK TWAIN. After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into a bulletin board, and read off " notices " of meet- ings and societies and things, till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of doom — a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities, away here in this age of abun- dant newspapers. Often, the less there is to justify a tra- ditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer, it was, and went into details : it pleaded for the church, and the little chil- dren of the church ; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States ; for Con- gress; for the President; for the officers of the Govern- ment; for poor sailors tossed by stormy seas; for the op- pressed millions groaning tinder the heel of European monarchs and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good. Amen. There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down. The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy REV. MR SPRAGUE. A DOG IN CHURCH. ^q-, the prayer, he only endured it — if he even did that much He was restive all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously — for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regular route over it — and when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions unfair and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of him, and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together, embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legs and smooth- ing them to its body as if they had been coat tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for it, they did not dare — he believed his soul would be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing v/hile the prayer was going on. But with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the instant the "Amen" was out, the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt detected the act, and made him let it go. The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod — and yet it was an argument that dealt in limit- less fire and brimstone, and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourses. However, this time he was really interested for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world's host at the millennium, when the lion and the lamb should lie down together, and a little child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral, of the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the principal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion. Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had, and ■got it out. It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws — a 404 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. '* pinch-bug," he called it. It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. A natu- ral fillip followed, the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the vv ^^ DIVERSION IN CHURCH. prize; walked aiound it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent- minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked A DOG IN CHURCH. 405 foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his fore pav/s within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at it with his teeth, and ierking his head till his ears flapped again. But he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a fly, but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that ; yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it ! Then there was a wild yelp of agony, and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till pres- ently he was buta woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance. By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness bemg at an end; for even the gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the v/hole congrega- tion when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced. Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety in it. He had but one marring thought; he v/as willing that the dog should play yAl\i his pinch-bug, but he did not think it was upright in him to carry it off. 4o6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. ^LIVER WENDELL HOLMES was bom in Cambridge, Mass., in 1809, and was graduated at Harvard in 1829. He first studied law, but after- wards took up medicine in the schools of Paris, and, on his return home, became Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth in 1838. Trom 1847 to 1883 he filled the same chair in Harvard. He is the author of many vol- umes of poetry and prose, which have all a wide fame, but of which •' The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" is perhaps the best known. He is easily the first of our more literary humorists. Having just returned from a visit to this admirable institution, in company with a friend who is one of the Directors, we pro- pose giving a short account of what we saw and heard. The great success of the Asylum for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth, several of the scholars from which have reached considerable distinction, one of them being connected with a leading Daily Paper in this city, and others having served in the State and National Legislatures, was the motive which led to the foundation of this excellent charity. Our late distinguished townsman, Noah Dow, Esquire, as is well known, bequeathed a large portion of his fortune to this establishment — '• being thereto moved," as his will expressed it, " by the desire of N'. Bowing some publick Institution for the benefit of Mankind." Being consulted as to the Rules of the Institution and the selection of a Superintend- ent, he replied, that "all Boards must construct their own Plat- forms of operation. Let them select anyhow, and he should be pleased." N. E. Howe, Esq., was' chosen in compliance with this delicate suggestion. The charter provides for the support of "One hundred aged and decayed Gentlemen-Punsters." On inquiry if there was no provision for females, my friend called my attention to this remarkable psychological fact, namely: There is no such thing as a female punster. This remark struck me forcibly, and, on reflection, I found that / never knetu nor Jieard of one, though I have once or tv/ice ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECA YED PUNSTERS. 407 heard a woman make a single detached pun, as I have known a hen to crow. On arriving at the south gate ol the Asylum grounds, I was about to ring, but my friend held my arm and begged me to rap with ray stick, which I did. An old man, with a very comical face, presently opened the gate and put out his head. " So you prefer Cane to A Bell, do you ?" he said, and began chuckling and coughing at a great rate. My friend winked at me. *' You're here still. Old Joe, I see," he said to the old man. " Yes, yes; and it's very odd, considering how often I've bolted, nights." He then threw open the double gates for us to ride through. "Now," said the old man, _^.. as he pulled the gates after us, mif^'Sy " you've had a long journey." "Why, how is that. Old. Joe ?" said my friend. pv "Don't you see?" he an- ,.- swered ; " there's the East hinges on one side of the gate, and there's the West hinges on t'other side — haw! haw! hawl" We had no sooner got into the yard than a feeble little gentleman, with a remarkably bright eye, came up to us, looking very serious, as if something had happened. " The town has entered a complaint against the asylum as a gambling establishment," he said to my friend the Director. "What do you mean?" said my friend. "Why, they complain that there's a lot o' rye on the premises," OLD JOE_ 4o8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. he answered, pointing to a field of that grain, and hobbled away, his shoulders shaking with laughter as he went. On entering the main building we saw the Rules and Regula- tions for the Asylum conspicuously posted up. I made a few extracts, which may be interesting. SECT. I. OF VERBAL EXERCISES 5. Each Inmate shall be permitted to make Puns freely, from eight in the morning until ten at night, except during Service in the Chapel and Grace before Meals. 6. At ten o'clock the gas will be turned off, and no further Puns, Conundrums, or other play on words will be allowed to be uttered, or to be uttered aloud. 9. Inmates who have lost their faculties, and cannot any longer make Puns, shall be permitted to repeat such as may be selected for them by the Chaplain out of the work of Mr. Joseph Miller. 10. Violent and unmanageable Punsters who interrupt others, when engaged in conversation, with Puns, or attempts at the same, shall be deprived of \.\v't\'c Joseph Millers, and, if necessary, placed in solitary confinement. SECT. III. OF DEPORTMENT AT MEALS 4. No inmate shall make any Pun, or attempt at the same, until the Blessing has been asked and the company are decently seated. 7. Certain Puns having been placed on the Index Expurgato- rius of the Institution, no Inmate shall be allowed to utter them, on pain of being debarred the perusal of Punch and Vanity Fair, and, if repeated, deprived of his Joseph Miller. Among these are the following: Allusions to Attic salt, when asked to pass the salt-cellar. Remarks on the Inmates being mustered, etc., etc. Personal allusions in connection with carrots and turnips. Attempts upon the word tomato, etc., etc. The following are also prohibited, excepting to such Inmates as may have lost their faculties, and cannot any longer make Puns of their own: " your own hair or a wig; " " it will be long enough, etc., etc.; " little of its age," etc., etc.; also playing upon the follow- ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED FUNSTERS. 409 ing words: /^^j-pital, mayor, pun, pitied, bread, sauce, sole, etc., etc., etc. See Index Expurgatorius, printed for use of Inmates. The Superintendent, who went round with us, had been a noted punster in his time, and well known in the business world, but lost his customers by making too free with their names — as in the famous story he set afloat in '29, oi forgeries attaching to the names of a noted Judge, an eminent lawyer, the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and the well-known Landlord at Springfield. One of \.\i& four Jerries, he added, was of gigantic magnitude. The Superintendent showed some of his old tendencies as he went round with us. " Do you know " — he broke out all at once — " why theiy don't take steppes in Tartary for establishing Insane Hospitals .?" We both confessed ignorance. "Because there are ;w;«a^ people to be found there," he said, with a dignified smile. He proceeded to introduce us to different Inmates. The first was a middle-aged, scholarly man, who was seated at a table with a Webster's Dictionary and a sheet of paper before him. " Well, what luck to-day, Mr. Mowzer ?" said the Superin- tendent. He turned to his notes and read: ' Don't you see Webster ers in the words cent(?r and theater ? " If he spells leather lether, and feather f ether, isn't there dan- ger that he'll give us a bad spell of weather ? • "Besides, Webster is a resurrectionist; he does not allow u to rest quietly in the mould. •' And again, because Mr. Worcester inserts an illustration in his text, is that any reason why Mr. Webster's publishers should hitch one on in their appendix ? It's what I call a Confiecf-a-cut trick. "Why is his way of spelling like the floor of an oven? Because it is under bread." "Mowzer!" said the Superintendent — "that word is on the Index!" " I forgot," said Mr. Mowzer — " please don't deprive me of Vanity Fair, this one time, Sir." "These are all, this morning. Good day, Gentlemen. Then to the Superintendent — Add you. Sir! " 4!0 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. The next Inmate was a semi-idiotic-looking old man. He had a heap of block-letters before him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without saying a word, to the arrangements he had made with them on the table. They were evidently anagrams, and had the merit of transposing the letters of the words employed with- out addition or subtraction. Here are a few of them: Smite ! Stop! True nib. Dr. Owl. j Res veri cat. I Is TRUE. Read ! All o' th' pay. O, THE ! O ! O, MY ! Pah .' Times. Post. Tribune. World. Advertiser. Allopathy, homceopathy. The mention of several New York papers led to two or three ^ ^ questions. Thus: Whether the Editor w-'^'A-l/V of the Tribune was ZT. 6^. r tail both, and says, ' Oh, no, this ain't no fat thing, I reckon ! If I ain't in luck ! — vv'hy, it's a perfectly elegant hole ! ' So he flew down and got that acorn, and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting his head back with the heavenliest smile on his face, when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude, and that smile faded gradually out of his countenance like breath off'n a razor, and the queerest look of surprise took its place. Then he says, ' Why, I didn't hear it fall ! ' He cocked his eye at the hole again and took a long look; raised up and shook his head; stepped around to the other side of the hole, and took another look from that side; shook his head again. He studied a while, then he just went into the ^^tails — walked round and round the hole, and spied into it from every point of the com- pass. No use. Now he took a thinking attitude on the comb of the roof, and scratched the back of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally says, 'Well, it's too many for me, that's cer- tain; must be a mighty long hole; however, I ain't got no time to fool around here; I got to 'tend to business; I reckon it's all right — chance it, anyway ! ' " So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, 420 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it, but he was too late. He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised up and sighed, and says, ' Consound it, I don't seem to understand this thing, no way; however, I'li tackle her again.' He fetched another acorn, and done his level best to see what become of it, but he couldn't. He says, ' Well, /never struck no such a hole as this before; I'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.' Then he begun to get mad. He held in for a spell, walking up and down the comb of the roof, and shaking his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got the upper hand of him presently, and he broke loose and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird take on so about a little thing. When he got through, he walks to the hole and looks in again for a half a minute; then he says, 'Well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole, and a mighty singular hole alto- gether— but I've started in to fill you, and I'm d d if I doni fill you, if it takes a hundred years ! ' ** And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work so since you was born. He laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped to take a look any more — he just hove 'em in, and went for more. Well, at last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. He comes a-drooping down, once more, sweating like an ice-pitcher, drops his acorn in and says, ' Now I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time! ' So he bent down for a look. If you'll believe me, when his head come up again he was just pale with rage. He says, ' I've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one of 'em, I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes! ' " He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his back agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impres- sions and begun to free his mind. I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say. " Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devo- tions, and stops to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him the whole circumstance, and says, * Now yonder's the hole, and if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself.' So this fellow BLUE- J AYS. ^21 went and looked, and comes back and says, ' How many did you say you put in tiiere?' ' Not any less than two tons,' says the sufferer. The other jay went and looked again. He couldn't seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays come. They all examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could have done. " They did call in more jays; then more and more, till pretty soon this whole region 'peared to have a blue flush about it. There must have been five thousand of them; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing, you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole, and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there before him. They examined the house all over, too. The door was standing half-open, and at last one old jay happened to go and light on it and look in. Of course, that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second. There lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor. He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. ' Come here ! ' he says, ' Come here, everybody; hang'd if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns ! ' They all came a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absurdity of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him home, and he fell over backwards suffocating with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same. "Well, sir, they roosted around here on the house-top and the trees for an hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain't no use to tell me a blue-jay hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know better. And memory too. They brought jays here from all over the United States to look down that hole, every summer for three years. Other birds too. And they could all see the point, except an owl that come from Nova Scotia to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on his way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny in it. But then, he was a good deal disappointed about Yo Semite, too." 422 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. AN ITALIAN'S VIEW OF A NEW ENGLAND WINTER. BY J. M. BAILEY. There was a burst in a tin conductor leading from the roof of the house on the corner of Rose and Myrtle streets the other afternoon, and the water ' thus escaping ran across the walk. Toward night the ~ " weather stiffened up, and the loose water became a sheet of ice. About four o'clock the next morning there was a slight fall of snow. In the base- ment of the building an Italian gentleman has a fruit store. Short- ly after six o'clock this morning he had his outside wares in a line of display. Peanuts being a specialty with him, two or three bush- els of that article made a tempting pile on a large stand. While he was making this ar- rangement, a carpenter with a tool -box on his shoulder came around the corner, and, stepping on the concealed ice, immediately threw his tool-box into the street, got up himself, looked around to see what had happened, and then picked up his tools. This so amused the Italian that he felt obliged to rush into the shelter of the base- ment to conceal his delight. Had he been a native of this country, it might have suggested itself to him to sweep the thin guise of snow from the ice and to sprinkle salt or ashes upon it, but being a for- eigner, and not very well acquainted with our language, he did SPOT. AN ITALIAN'S VIEW OF WINTER. 423 not think of this, but, instead, he posted himself in a position to give him a good view of the corner, and patiently waited for developments. He saw them. If his object was to get an idea of the fullness and flexibility of the English language, he could not have possibly adopted a better course. Scarcely had the carpenter gathered up his things and limped off, when a man smoking came hurrying along. When he reached the ice he suddenly turned part way around, bit a brier-wood pipe completely in twain, and slid on his breast off from the walk into the gutter. He got up, cautiously recovered his pipe, and melted away. The Italian shook all over. Following closely after this mishap was a laborer with a dinner- kettle. When he touched the ice it was difficult for the fruit merchant to determine whether it was his feet or another part of his person — it was done so quick. The new-comer appeared to suddenly come apart and shut up at the middle, and in the same flash the tin pail described a circle of lightning rapidity, and was then slapped against the pavement with terrific force. At the same instant the Italian saw a piece of pie, several half-slices of buttered bread, two hard-boiled eggs, a piece of cold beef, and a fork and spoon fly off in different directions, while a pint tin of coffee made its appearance, and emptied its contents in the prostrate man's lap. While this individual was getting up to his feet, and securing his pail and cutlery, the Italian managed to blend con- siderable instruction with the amusement. Then there came a man with a board on his shoulder. He laid down on the board, with one of his hands under the board. Then he got up, and put the injured hand between his knees, where he pressed it tightly, while he used the most dreadful language the Italian ever heard; and he didn't hear it all either, being so con- vulsed with laughter as to necessarily divide his attention. And thus the performance went on until after eight o'clock. Scarcely ten minutes elapsed between the acts. Sometimes a boy would be the hero, then again a couple of merchants, or perhaps somebody connected with a bank. Whoever it might be, he went aown, and went down hard, and the Italian watched and improved his mind, and began to think that this country had its advantages as well as its disadvantages. It was eleven minutes past eight when the final catastrophe occurred. This was consummated in the person ot a long slim man with a picture under his arm, and 424 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. a very large woman carrying a basket. The long slim man was somewhat in advance. The Italian, being impressed with the con- viction that something of an extraordinary nature was about to transpire, stared with fairly bulging eyes at the coming figure. No sooner did the tall slim man touch the treacherous spot, than the venturing foot kicked out most savagely at the atmosphere, and his body shot around like fireworks. The picture flew from his possession at the same moment, and being thus freed he made a spasmodic clutch with all his limbs.at once for a place of refuge, and in a flash his legs whipped about a corner leg of the inoffen- sive peanut stand, and the great shining yellow pyramid followed him to the pavement. The horrified Italian, stunned for an instant by the enormity of the catastrophe, sought to plunge out to the rescue of his goods, but was too late. The fleshy woman, having rushed to the aid of the tall slim man, who was her husband, was caught herself by the subtle foe, and in her descent, which was by far the most vigorous of the series, she took in two-thirds of the peanuts; and the crash of the demolished fruit, as she pinned it to the walk, might have been heard four squares away. The unhappy vender reached the place in time to be taken in himself, and the addition of one hundred and thirty pounds of macaroni-fed Italian added to the dismal proportions of the scene. How they got disentangled and on their feet, no one seems able to explain, but the result was reached amid an appalling uproar of Italian, English and feminine noises. What a great matter a little fire kindleth ! Ten cents' worth of salt would have saved all the misery and distress. As it is, Danbury has some twenty persons with damaged backs or legs, the owner of the building has four suits on hand for damages, the tall slim man and his wife are confined to their beds, and on Saturday last the Italian was morosely squatted alongside of the funnel of a steamer bound for Italy. THE NOBLEMAN AND THE OYSTER. 425 THE NOBLEMAN AND THE OYSTER. BY AMBROSE BIERCE. rrMBROSE BIERCE, author of " Bierce's Fables," was born in Akron, O., j^ in 1843. He served as a soldier in the war, and in 1865 went to San Francisco, where he was in newspaper work until 1S72. Then he went to London, where he had great success, and published "Bierciana. " With the younger Tom Hood he founded London Fun. He retiorned to California in 1877, and is now an editor of the San Francisco Examiner. A CERTAIN Persian nobleman obtained from a cow gipsy a small Oyster. Holding him up by the beard, he addressed him thus : " You must try to forgive me for what I am about to do ; and THE NOBLEMAN AND THE OYSTER. 4 26 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAE V OF HUMOR. you might as well set about it at once, for you haven't much time. I should never think of swallowing you if it were not so easy ; but opportunity is the strongest of all temptations. Besides, I am an orphan, and very hungry." "Very well," replied the Oyster; "it affords me genuine pleasure to comfort the parentless and the starving. I have already done my best for our friend here, of whom you purchased me ; but although she has an amiable and accommodating stom- ach, we couldn't agree. For this trifling incompatibility — would you believe it ? — she was about to stew me ! Savior, benefactor, proceed ! " " I think," said the nobleman, rising and laying down the Oyster, " I ought to know something more definite about your antecedents before succoring you. If you couldn't agree with your mistress, you are probably no better than you should be." People who begin doing something from a selfish motive, fre- quently drop it when they learn that it is a real benevolence. BIRDOFREDUl^ SAWIN AFTER THE WAR. 427 BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN AFTER THE WAR. BY J. R. LOWELL. I s'posE you wonc'er ware I be; I can't tell, far the soul o' me, Exactly ware I be myself — meanin' by thet the holl o' me. Wen I left hum, I hed two legs, an' they worn't bad ones neither (The scaliest trick they ever played wuz bringin' on me hither), Now one on 'em's I dunno ware — they thought I wuz adyin', An' sawed it off because they said 'twuz kin' o' mortifyin'; I'm willin' to believe it wuz, an yit I don't 'see, nuther, Wy one should take to feelin' cheap a minnit sooner'n t'other, Sence both wuz equilly to blame; but things is ez they be; It took on so they took it off, an' thet's enough fer me: There's one good thing, though, to be said about my woodea new one — The liquor can't git into it ez 't used to in the true one; So it saves drink; an' then, besides, a feller couldn't beg A gretter blessin' then to hev one oilers sober peg; It's true a chap's in want o' two fer follerin' a drum. But all the march I'm up to now is jest to Kingdom Come. I've lost one eye, but thet's a loss it's easy to supply Out o' the glory that I've gut, fer thet is all my eye; An' one is big enough, I guess, by diligently usin' it, To see all I shall ever git by way o' pay fer losin' it, Off'cers, I notice, who git paid fer all our thumps an' kickin's, Du wal by keepin' single eyes arter the fattest pickin's; So, ez the eye's put fairly out, I'll larn to go without it, An' not allow myself to be no gret put out about it. Now, le' me see, thet isn't all; I used, 'fore leavin' Jaalam, To count things on my finger-eends, but sutthin' seems to ail 'em: Ware's my left hand ? O, darn it, yes, I recollect wut's come on't; I hain't no left arm but my right, an' thet's gut jest a thumb on 't; It aint so hendy ez it wuz to cal'late a sum on 't. I've hed some ribs broke — six (I b'lieve) — I hain't kep' no account on 'em; Wen pensions git to be the talk, I'll settle the amount on 'em. 4 '2 8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. An' now I'm speakin' about ribs, it kin' o' brings to mind One thet I couldn't never break — the one I lef behind; Ef you should see her, jest clear out the spout o' your invention An' pour the longest sweet' nin' in about annooal pension, An' kin' o' hint (in case, you know, the critter should refuse to be Consoled) I ain't so 'xpensive now to keep ez wut I used to be; There's one arm less, ditto one eye, an' then the leg thet's wooden Can be took off an' sot away wenever ther's a puddin'. I s'pose you think I'm comin' back ez opperlunt ez thunder, With shiploads o' gold images an' varus sorts o' plunder; Wal, 'fore I vullinteered, I thought this country wuz a sort o' Canaan, a reg'lar Promised Land flowin' with rum an' water, Ware propaty growed up like time, without no cultivation, An' gold wuz dug ez taters be among our Yankee nation, Ware nateral advantages were pufificly amazin', Ware every rock there wuz about with precious stuns wuz blazin', Ware mill-sites filled the country up ez thick ez you could cram 'em, An' desput rivers run about abeggin' folks to dam 'em; Then there were meetin' houses, tu, chockful o' gold an' silver Thet you could take, an' no one couldn't hand ye in no bill fer — Thet's wut I thought afore I went, thet's wut them fellers told us Thet stayed to hum an' speechified an' to the buzzards sold us; I thought thet gold mines could be gut cheaper than Chiny asters, An' see myself acomin' back like sixty Jacob Astors; But sech idees soon melted down an' didn't leave a grease-spot; I vow my holl sheer o' the spiles wouldn't come nigh a V spot; Although, most anywares we've ben, you needn't break no locks, Nor run no kin' o' risks, to fill your pocket full o' rocks. I guess I mentioned in my last some o' the nateral feeturs O' this all-fiered buggy hole in th' way o' awfle creeturs. But I fergut to name (new things to speak on so abounded) Hov/ one day you'll most die o' thust, an' 'fore the next git drownded. The clymit seems to me jest like a teapot made o' pewter Our Prudence hed, thet wouldn't pour (all she could du) to suit her; Fust place, the leaves 'ould choke the spout, so's not a drop 'ould dreen out, BIRDOFREDUM SAWm AFTER THE WAR. 429 Then Prude 'ould tip an' tip an' tip, till the holl kit bust clean out, The kiver hinge-pin bein' lost, tea-leaves an' tea an' kiver 'Ould ail come down kerswosh ! ez though the dam broke in a river. Jest so't is here; holl months there aint a day o' rainy weather, An' jest ez th' officers 'ould be alayin' heads together Ez t' how they'd mix their drink at sech a milingtary deepot — 'T 'ould pour ez though the lid wuz off the everlastin' teapot. The consequence is, thet I shall take, wen I'm allowed to leave here. One piece o' propaty along — an' thet's the shakin' fever; It's reggilar employment, though, an' thet aint thought to harm one, Nor 't ain't so tiresome ez it wuz with t'other leg an' arm on; An' it 's a consolation, tu, although it doosn't pay. To hev it said you're some gret shakes in any kin' o' way. 'T worn't very long, I tell ye wut, I thought o' fortin-makin' — One day a reg'lar shiver-de-freeze, an' next ez good ez bakin' — One day abrilin' in the sand, then smoth'rin' in the mashes — Git up all sound, be put to bed a mess o' hacks an' smashes. But then, thinks I, at any rate there's glory to be hed — Thet's an investment, arter all, thet mayn't turn out so bad; But somehow, wen we'e fit an' licked, I oilers found the thanks Gut kin' o' lodged afore they come ez low down ez the ranks; The Gin'rals gut the biggest sheer, the Gunnels next, an' so on — We never gut a blasted mite o' glory, ez I know on; An' spose we hed, I wonder how you're goin' to contrive its Division so's to give a piece to twenty thousand privits; Ef you should multiply by ten the portion o' the brav'st one, You wouldn't git more'n half enough to speak of on a grave- stun; We git the licks — we're jest the grist thet 's put into War's hoppers; Leftenants is the lowest grade thet helps pick up the coppers. It may suit folks thet go agin a body with a soul in't. An' aint contented with a hide without a bagnet hole in't; But glory is a kin' o' thing / sha'n't pursue no furder Coz thet 's the off'cers parquisite — yourn's on'y jest the murder. 430 MARK- TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Wal, arter I gin glory up, thinks I, at least there's one Thing in the bills we aint hed yit, an' thet's the (Glorious fun; Ef once we git to Mexico, we fairly may persume we All day an' night shall revel in the halls o' Montezumy. I'll tell ye wut my revels wuz, an' see how you would like 'em; We never gut inside the hall: the nighest ever /come Wuz Stan' in' sentry in the sun (an', fact, it seemed di cent'ry) A ketchin' smells o' biled an' roast thet come out thru the entry, An' hearin' ez I sweltered thru my passes an' repasses, A rat-tat-too o' knives an' forks, a clinkty-clink o' glasses: I can't tell off the bill o' fare the Gin'rals hed inside; All I know is, thet out o' doors a pair o' soles wuz fried. An' not a hundred miles away frum ware this child wuz posted, A Massachusetts citizen wuz baked an' biled an' roasted; The on'y thing like revellin' thet ever come to me Wuz bein' routed out o' sleep by thet darned revelee. They say the quarrel's settled now; for my part I've some doubt on't. 'T'll take more fish-skin than folks think to take the rile clean out on't; At any rate, I'm so used up I can't do no more fightin' The only chance thet's left to me is politics or writin'; Now, ez the people's gut to hev a milingtary man, An' I ain't nothin' else jest nov;, I've hit upon a plan; The can'idatin' line, you know, 'ould suit me to a T, An' ef I lose, 't wunt hurt my ears to lodge another flea; So I'll set up as can'idate fer any kin' o' office (I mean fer any thet includes good easy-cheers an' soffies; Fer ez tu runnin' fer a place ware work's the time o' day. You know thet's wut I never did — except the other way); Ef it's the Presidential cheer fer which I'd better run, V/ut two legs anyware about could keep up with my one ? There ain't no kin' o' quality in can'idates, it's said. So useful ez a wooden leg — except a wooden head; There's nothin' ain't so poppylar — (wy, it's a parfect sin To think wut Mexico hez paid fer Santy Anny's pin) — Then I hain't gut no princerples, an', sence I wuz iinee-high, 1 never did hev any gret, ez you can testify; I'm a decided peace-man, tu, an' go ag'in the war — BIRDOFREDUM SAWm AFTER THE WAR. ^?>^ Fer now the hoU on't's gone an' past, wut is there to go for ? Ef, wile you're 'lectioneerin' round, some curus chaps should beg To know my views o' State offairs, jest answer, wooden leg ! Ef they ain't settisfied with thet, an' kin o' pry an' doubt, An' ax fer sutthin' deffynit, jest say, one eye put out ! Thet kin' o' talk I guess you'll find I'll answer to a charm, An' wen you're druv tu nigh the wall, hoi' up my missin' arm TIMBERTOES. Ef they should nose round fer a pledge, put on a vartoous look An' tell 'em thet's percisely wut I never gin nor — took ! Then you can call me " Timbertoes " — thet's wut the people likes; Sutthin' combinin' morril truth with phrases sech ez strikes; Some say the people's fond o' this, or thet, or wut you please — I tell ye, wut the people want is jest correct idees; *' Old Timbertoes," you see, 's a creed it's safe to be quite bold on. 4.12 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. There's nothiii' in't the other side can any ways git hold on; it's a good tangible idee, a sutthin' to embody Thet valooable class o' men who look thru brandy-toddy; It gives a Party Platform, tu, jest level with the mind Of all right-thinkin', honest folks thet mean to go it blind; Then there air other good hooraws to dror on ez you need 'em. Sech ez the one-eyed Slarterer, the bloody Birdofredum; Them's wut takes hold o' folks thet think, ez wellez o' the masses, An' makes you sartin o' the aid o' good men of all classes. There's one thing I'm in doubt about; in order to be Presidunt, It's absolutely ne'ssary to be a Southern residunt; The Constitution settles thet, an' also thet a feller Must own a nigger o' some sort, jet black or brown or yeller Now I hain't no objections ag'in particklar climes. Nor agin ownin' anythin' (except the truth, sometimes), But. ez I haint no capital, up there among ye, maybe, You might raise funds enough for me to buy a low-priced baby, An' then to suit the No'thern folks, who feel obleeged to say They hate an' cuss the very thing they vote fer every day. Say your're assured I go full butt fer Libbaty's diffusion. An' made the purchis on'y jest to spite the Institootion — But, golly ! there's the currier's hoss upon the pavement pawin'! I'll be more 'xylicit iu ray next. Yourn, Birdofredum Sawin. CUSTOM HOUSE MORALS. 433 CUSTOM HOUSE MORALS. BY W. D. HOWELLS. The travelers all met at breakfast and duly discussed the adventures of the night; and for the rest, the forenoon passed rapidly and slowly with Basil and Isabel, as regret to leave Que- bec, or the natural impatience of travelers to be off, overcame them. Isabel spent part of it in shopping', for she had found some small sums of money and certain odd corners in her trunks still unappropriat- ed, and the hand- some stores on the Rue Fabrique were very tempting. She said she would just go in and look ; and the wise reader im- agines the result. As she knelt over her boxes, trying so to distribute her purchases as to make them look as if they were old — ■ old things of hers, which she had brought all the way round from Boston with her — a fleeting touch of conscience stayed her hand. " Basil," she said, "perhaps we'd better declare some of these things. What's the duty on those ? " she asked, pointing to cer- tain articles. " I don't know. About a hundred per cent, ad valorem.'' " Cest a dire—? " " As much as they cost." "O fhe)i, dearest," responded Isabel indignantly, wrong to smuggle! I won't declare a thread! " " That's very well for you, whom they won't ask. they ask me whether there's anything to declare ? " CUSTOM HOUSE MORALS. " it can't be But what if 434 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Isabel looked at her husband and hesitated. Then she replied, in terms that I am proud to record in honor of American woman- hood: "You mustn't fib about it, Basil" (heroically); "I couldn't respect you if you did " (tenderly); " but " (with deci- sion) '■'■you must slip out of it some way! A WESTERN REMINISCENCE. Years ago, when Rock Island was a small village, and its peo- ple had lots of fun all to themselves, one of our very sober and dignified citizens put his own head under one end of a yoke and a little bull's under the other, to teach the animal how to be use- ful and work. When he found the bull was running away with him down a dirt road towards a crowd around the country store on Illinois Street, he measured sixteen feet at a jump, kept up with the bull, and yelled at the top of his voice : " Look out ! flere we come, darn our fool souls ! Head us, somebody ! " and when halted and the yoke was being lifted from his neck, he yelled, " Unyoke the bull ; never mind me. I will stand ! " — Newspaper, THE TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF INANIMATE THINGS. 435 THE TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF INANIMATE THINGS. BY KATHERINE KENT CHILD WALKER. IT'ATHERINE KENT CHILD WALKER was born in Pittsfield, Vt., in A. 1842. She is a daughter of the Rev. Willard Child. She married the Rev. Edward Ashley Walker m 1856, and has published several juveniles anony- mously, edited two compilations of sacred poetry, " The Cross Bearer, " and "Songs of Prayer and Praise," translated from the German "Climbing the Glacier," and is best known by an article in The Atlantic, entitled "The Total Depravity of Inanimate Things " (September, 1864). I AM confident that, at the annunciation of my theme, Andover, Princeton and Cambridge will skip like rams, and the little hills of East Windsor, Meadville and Fairfax like lambs. However di- vinity schools may refuse to " skip " in unison, and may butt and batter each other about the doctrine and origin of human depravity, all will join devoutly in the credo, I believe in the total depravity of inani- mate things. The whole subject lies in a nutshell, or, rather, an apple-skin. We have clerical author- ity for affirming that all its miseries were let loose upon the human race by "them greenin's " tempting our mother to curious pomolog- ical speculations ; and from that time till now — Longfel- low, thou reasonest well! — "things are not what they seem," but are diabolically otherwise — masked-batteries, nets, gins, and snares of evil. A LOST EFFORT. rVi I ARY OF JIUMUH. -aintled of — can I ever cease to rer at our lyceum a few winters us audience, applauding him all edoot his handkerchief, for ora- tw»rtently flung from his pocket . : ijTvcn to him on his way to -^^lin^fljg^) it^w tmpel^^^^^lkr from an iv- ~ '^^^^VKcountry- i •: € m m^ ^ -^ » T//£ TOTAL DEFRA VITY OP INANIMA T THINGS. 437 of all its beneficiaries that his heart overflowedwith joy, and he exclaimed to a little maiden whose appearance vas particularly suggestive of creature-comforts — " Why, my lite girl ! you have everything that heart can wish, haven't you Imagine the bewilderment and horror of the prelate, when th miniature Flora McFlimsey drew down the corners of her mo.h lugubriously, and sought to accommodate the puffs and diples of her fat Jittle body to an expression of abject misery, as ic replied, " No, 1, sir I I haven't got any — skeleton !" have suffered know the disposition of ,'aceless " skele- themselves on " foolish " pitchei bureau-knobs, splinters, nails, and, intcd, any projec- ,a dead level. fgestive of volumous distresses. inexplicable rea^n, are wont to and u to do tht or prophet o. Realize, if yc nine long-suffer! neither go down-t( descrying some ^^ placard, some exai,,^ from headquarters, whic. instantly into an animated r saving days, similar grievances st his cabinet to issue a proclamation, 1 into his pulpit Tiith a scathing homily, Pu lants of h an comfort. Upe relati . to their own, Ihuh urs, that I did ^^^H ited their grief ^^^^1 more honored ^^^P heir garments. ^^H^ fense has ^H /// as the ^H did ^^H not ^^V •ch t 5 » ■■ 11^: 436 MARK TWAIN ' S LIBRA/? Y OF HUMOR. (In this connection I am reminded of — can I ever cease to remember? — the unlucky lecturer at our lyceum a few winters ago, who, on rising to address his audience, applauding him all the while most vehemently, pulled out his handkerchief, for ora- torical purposes only, and inadvertently flung from his pocket three "Baldwins," that a friend had given to him on his way to the hall, straight into the front row of giggling girls.) My zeal on this subject received new impetus recently from an exclamation which pierced the thin partitions of the country- parsonage, once my home, where I chanced to be a guest. From the adjoining dressing-room issued a prolonged " Y-ah !" — not the howl of a spoiled child, nor the protest of a captive gorilla, but the whole-souled utterance of a mighty son of Anak, whose amiability is invulnerable to weapons of human aggrava- tion. I paused in the midst of toilet-exigencies, and listened sym- pathetically, for I recognized the probable presence of the old enemy to whom the bravest and sweetest succumb. Confirmation and explanation followed speedily in the half apologetic, wholly wrathful declaration — " The pitcher was made foolish in the first place." I dare afiirm that, if the spirit oi Lindley Murray himself were at that moment hovering over that scene of trial, he dropped a tear, or, better still, an adverbial ly upon the false grammar, and blotted it out forever. I comprehended the scene at once. I had been there. I felt again the remorseless swash of the water over neat boots and immaculate hose ; I saw the perverse intricacies of its meander- ings over the carpet, upon which the " foolish " pitcher had been confidingly deposited ; I knew, beyond the necessity of ocular demonstration, that, as sure as there were " pipe-hole " or crack in the ceiling of the study below, those inanimate things would inevitably put their evil heads together, and bring to grief the long-suffering Dominie, with whom, during my day, such inun- dations had been of at least bi-weekly occurrence, instigated by crinoline. The inherent wickedness of that " thing of beauty " will be acknowledged by all mankind, and by every female not reduced to the deplorable poverty of the heroine of the following veracious anecdote. A certain good bishop, on making a tour of inspection through a mission-school of his diocese, was so impressed by the aspect THE TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF INANIMATE THINGS. 437 of all its beneficiaries that his heart overflowed with joy, and he exclaimed to a little maiden whose appearance was particularly- suggestive of creature-comforts— " Why, my little girl ! you have everything that heart can wish, haven't you?" Imagine the bewilderment and horror of the prelate, when the miniature Flora McFlimsey drew down the corners of her mouth lugubriously, and sought to accommodate the puffs and dimples of her fat little body to an expression of abject misery, as she replied, " No indeed, sir I I haven't got any — skeleton !" We who have suffered know the disposition of graceless " skele- tons " to hang themselves on " foolish " pitchers, bureau-knobs, rockers, cobble-stones, splinters, nails, and,' indeed, any projec- tion a tenth of a line beyond a dead level. The mention of nails is suggestive of voluminous distresses. Country-parsonages, from some inexplicable reason, are wont to bristle all over with these impish assailants of human comfort. I never ventured to leave my masculine relatives to their own, devices for more than twenty-four consecutive hours, that I did hot return to find that they had seemingly manifested their grief at my absence after the old Hebraic method (" more honored In the breach than the observance "), by rending their garments. When summoned to their account, the invariable defense has been a vehement denunciation of some particular nail as the guilty cause of my woes. By the way, O Christian woman of the nineteenth century, did it ever enter your heart to give devout thanks that you did not share the woe of those Vv'hose fate it was to " sojourn in Mesech and dwell in the tents of Kedar"? that it did not fall to your lot to do the plain sewing and mending for some Jewish patriarch, or prophet of yore ? Realize, if you can, the masculine aggravation and the femi- nine long-suffering of a period when the head of a family could neither go down-town, nor even sit at his tent-door, without descrying some wickedness in high places, some insulting placard, some exasperating war-bulletin, some offensive order from headquarters, which caused him to transform himself instantly into an animated ragbag. Whereas, in these women- saving days, similar grievances send President Abraham into his cabinet to issue a proclamation, the Reverend Jeremiah into his pulpit with a scathing homily, Poet-Laureate David to 438 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. the Atlantic with, a burning lyric, and Major- General Joab to the privacy of his tent, there to calm his perturbed spirit with Drake's Plantation Bitters. In humble imitation of another, I would state that this indorsement of the potency of a specific is entirely gratuitous, and that I am stimulated thereto by no remu- neration, fluid or otherwise. ■ Blessed be this day of sewing-machines for women, and of safety-valves and innocent explosives for their lords ! But this is a digression. I awoke very early in life to the consciousness that I held the doctrine which we are considering. On a hapless day, when I was perhaps five years old, I was, in my own estimation, intrusted with the family dignity, when I was deposited for the day at the house of a lordly Pharisee of the parish, with solemnly repeated instructions in table-manners and the like. One who never analyzed the mysteries of a sensitive child's heart cannot appreciate the sense of awful responsibility which oppressed me during that visit. But all went faultlessly for a time. I corrected myself instantly each time I said, "Yes, Ma'am," to Mr. Simon, and " No, Sir," to Madam, which was as often as I addressed them ; I clenched little fists and lips reso- lutely, that they might not touch, taste, handle tempting bijouterie. I even held in check the spirit of inquiry rampant within me, and indulged myself with only one question to every three rjiin- utes of time. At last I found myself at the handsome dinner-table, triumph- antly mounted upon two " Comprehensive Commentaries " and a dictionary, fearing no evil from the viands before me. Least of all did I suspect the vegetables of guile. But deep in the heart of a bland, mealy mouthed potato lurked cruel designs upon my fair reputation. No sooner had I, in the most approved style of nursery good- breeding, applied my fork to its surface, than the hard-hearted thing executed a wild pirouette before my astonished eyes, and then flew on impish wings across the room, dashing out its mali- cious brains, I am happy to say, against the parlor door, but leaving me in a half-comatose state, stirred only by vague long- ings for a lodge with "proud Korah's troop," whose destination is unmistakably set forth in the " Shorter Catechism." THE TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF INANIMATE THINGS. 441 decorously, but still recognizable, from the courtly Guy himself 1 What can it mean ? In my perturbation my eyes fell, and rested upon the sack, whose newness and glorifying effect had been already noticed by my lynx-eyed parent. I here pause to remark, that I had intended to request the compositor to " set up " the coming sentence in explosive cap- itals, by way of emphasis, but forbear, realizing that it already staggers under the weight of its own significance. That sack was wrong side out ! Stern necessity, proverbially known as " the mother of mven- tion," and practically the step-mother of ministers' daughters, had made me eke out the silken facings of the front with cam- bric linings for the back and sleeves. Accordingly, in the full blaze of the concert-room, there sat I, " accoutred as I was," in motley attire — my homely little economies patent to admiring spectators : on either shoulder, budding wings composed of unequa' parts of sarcenet-cambric and cotton-batting; and in my heart — parricide I had almost said, but it was rather the more filial sentiment of desire to operate for cataract upon my father's eyes. But a moment's reflection sufficed to transfer my indigna- tion to its proper object, the sinful sack itself, which, concerting with its kindred darkness, had planned this cruel assault upon my innocent pride. A constitutional obtuseness renders me delightfully insensible to one fruitful source of provocation among inanimate things. I am so dull as to regard all distinctions between ''rights" and "lefts " as invidious; but I have witnessed the agonized struggles of many a victim of fractious boots, and been thankful that " I am not as other men are," in ability to comprehend the difference between my right and left foot. Still, as already intimated, I have seen wise men driven mad by a thing of leather and waxed -ends. A little innocent of three years, in all the pride of his first boots, was aggravated, by the perversity of the right to thrust itself on to the left leg, to the utterance of a contraband expletive. When reproved by his horror-stricken mamma, he maintained a dogged silence. In order to pierce his apparently indurated conscience, his censor finally said, solemnly : 442 MAUK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " Dugald! God knows that you said that wicked word." " Does He ? " cried the baby -victim of reral depravity, in a tone of relief; " then He knows it was a doke " {Anglid, joke). But, mind you, the sin-tempting boot intended no "doke." The toilet, with its multiform details and complicated machin- ery, is a demon whose surname is Legion. Time would fail me to speak of the elusiveness of soap, the knottiness of strings, the transitory nature of buttons, the inclina- tion of suspenders to twist, and of hooks to forsake their lawful eyes, and cleave only unto the hairs of their hapless owner's head. (It occurs to me as barely possible that, in the last case, the hooks may be innocent, and the sinfulness may lie in capillary attraction.) And, O my brother or sister in sorrow, has it never befallen you, when bending all your energies to the mighty task of " doing " your back-hair, to find yourself gazing inanely at the opaque back of your brush, while the hand-mirror, which had maliciously insinuated itself into your right hand for this express purpose, came down upon your devoted head with a resonant whack ? I have alluded, parenthetically, to the possible guilt of capil- lary attraction, but I am prepared to maintain against the attrac- tion of gravitation the charge of total depravity. Indeed, I should say of it, as did the worthy exhorter of the Dominie's old parish in regard to slavery, " It's the wickedest thing in the world, except sin! " It was only the other day that I saw depicted upon the young divine's countenance, from this cause, thoughts " too deep for tears," and, perchance, too earthly for clerical utterance. From a mingling of sanitary and economic considerations, he had cleared his own sidewalk after a heavy snow-storm. As he stood, leaning upon his shovel, surveying with smiling compla- cency his accomplished task, the spite of the arch-fiend Gravitation was raised against him, and, finding the impish slates (hadn't Luther something to say about " as many devils as tiles'' ?) ready to co-operate, an avalanche was the result, making the last state of that sidewalk worse than the first, and sending the divine into the house with a battered hat, and an article of faith supplement- ary to the orthodox thirty-nine. Prolonged reflection upon a certain class of grievances has THE TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF INANIMATE THINGS. 443 convinced me that mankind has generally ascribed them to a guiltless source. I refer to the unspeakable aggravation of "typographical errors," rightly so-called — for, in nine cases out of ten, I opine it is the types themselves which err. I appeal to fellow-sufferers, if the substitutions and interpola- tions and false com- binations of letters are not often alto- gether too absurd for humanity. Take as one in- stance, the experience of a friend who, in /J writing in all inno- cency of a session of the Historical Socie- ty, affirmed mildly in manuscript, "All went smoothly," but weeks after was made to de- clare in blatant print, "All went snoringly .'" As among men, so in the alphabet, one sin- ner destroyeth much good. The genial Senator from theGranite Hills . told me of an early aspiration of his own for literary distinc- tion, which was beheaded remorselessly by a villain of this type. By way of majestic peroration to a pathetic article, he had ex- claimed, " For what would we exchange the fame of Washing- ton ? " — referring, I scarcely need say, to the man of fragrant memory, and not to the odorous capital. The black-hearted little dies, left to their own devices one night, struck dismay to the heart of the aspirant author by propounding in black and white a prosaic inquiry as to what would be considered a fair equivalent for t\iQ farm of the Father of his Country! A SURPRISE. 444 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Among frequent instances of this depravity in my own expe- rience, a flagrant example still shows its ugly front on a {'»ge of a child's book. In the latest edition of "Our Little Girls" {good Mr. Randolph, pray read, mark, learn and inwardly digest), there: occurs a description of a christening, wherein a venerable divine is made to dip " his head" into the consecrating water, and lay it upon the child. Disembodied words are also sinners and the occasions of sin. Who has not broken the Commandments in consequence of the provocation of some miserable little monosyllable eluding his grasp in the moment of his direst need, or of some impertinent interloper thrusting itself in, to the utter demoralization of his well-organized sentences ? Who has not been covered with shame at tripping over the pronunciation of some perfectly sim.ple word like " statistics," "inalienable," " inextricable," etc., etc. ? Whose experience will not empower him to sympathize with that unfortunate invalid who, on being interrogated by a pious visitor in regard to her enjoyment of means of grace, informed the horror-stricken inquisitor : " I have not been to church for years, I have been such an infidel;'' and then, moved by a dim impression of wrong somewhere, as well as by the. evident shock inflicted upon her worthy visitor, but conscious of her own integ- rity, repeated still more emphatically : '' No; I have been a con- firmed infidel for years." But a peremptory summons from an animated nursery forbids my lingering longer in this fruitful field. I can only add an instance of corroborating testimony from each member of the circle originating this essay. The Dominie loq. — " Sha'n't have anything to do with it! It's a wicked thing! To be sure, I do remember, when I was a little boy, I used to throw stones at the chip-basket when it upset the cargo I had just laded, and it was a great relief to my feelings too. Besides, you've told stories about me which were anything but true. I don't remember anything about that sack." Lady-visitor loq. — "The first time I was invited to Mr. 's (the Hon. ^^tt^ 's, you know), I was somewhat anxious, but went home flattering myself I had made a creditable impres- sion. Imagine my consternation, when I came to relieve the pocket of my gala gown, donned for the occasion, at discovering among its treasures a tea-napkin, marked gorgeously with the THE TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF INANIMATE THINGS. 445 Hon. "s family-crest, which had maliciously crept into its depths in order to bring me into disgrace! I have never been able to bring myself to the point of confession, in spite of my subsequent intimacy with the family. If it were not for Joseph's positive assertion to the contrary, I should be of the opinion that his cup of divination conjured itself deliberately and sinfully into innocent Benjamin's sack." Student log. (Testimony open to criticism.) — " Met pretty girl on the street yesterday. Sure I had on my ' Armstrong ' hat when I left home — sure as fate; but when I went to pull it off — by the crown, of course — to bow to pretty girl, I smashed in xdy beaver! How it got there, don't know. Knocked it off. Pretty girl picked it up and handed it to me. Confounded things, any way! " Young divine loq. — " While I was in the army, I was in Wash- ington on ' leave ' for two or three days. One night, at a party, I became utterly bewildered in an attempt to c onverse, after long desuetude, with a fascinating woman. I went stumbling on, amazing her more and more, until finally I covered myself with glory by the categorical statement that in my opinion General McClellan could ' never get across the Peninsula without a fattle J I beg pardon, Madam ! what I mean to say is, without a bight.' " School-girl loq.—^' When Uncle was President, I was at the White House at a state-dinner one evening. Senator came rushing in frantically after we had been at table some time. No sooner was he seated than he turned to Aunt to apologize for his delay; and, being very much heated, and very much embar- rassed, he tugged away desperately at his pocket, and finally succeeded in extracting a huge blue stocking, evidently of home manufacture, with which he proceeded to wipe his forehead very energetically and very conspicuously. I suppose the truth was that the poor man's handkerchiefs were 'on a strike,' and thrust forward this homespun stocking to bring him to terms." School-girl, No. 2, log. — "My last term at F., I was expecting a box of 'goodies' from home. So when the message came, ' An express-package for you, Miss Fanny!' I invited all my specials to come and assist at the opening. Instead of the expected box, there appeared a misshapen bundle, done up in yellow wrapping-paper. Four such dejected-looking damsels 446 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. were never seen before as we, standing around the ugly o.d thing. Finally, Alice suggested : " 'Open it! " "'Oh, I know what it is,' I said; 'it is my old Thibet, that mother has had made over for me.' " ' Let's see,' persisted Alice. " So I opened the package. The first thing I drew out was too much for me. "'What a funny-looking basque!' exclaimed Alice. All the rest were struck dumb with disappointment. "No! not a basque at all, but a man's black satin waistcoat ! and next came objects about which there could be no doubt — a pair of dingy old trousers, and a swallow-tailed coat! Imagine the chorus of damsels! " The secret was, that two packages lay in father's office — one for me, the other for those everlasting freedmen. John was to forward mine. He had taken up the box to write my address on it, when the yellow bundle tumbled off the desk at his feet and scared the wits out of his head. So I came in for father's second- hand clothes, and the Ethiopians had the ' goodies'! " Repentant Dominie log. — " I don't approve of it at all ; but then, if you must write the wicked thing, I heard a good story for you to day. Dr. found himself in the pulpit of a Dutch Reformed Church the other Sunday. You know he is one who prides himself on his adaptation to places and times. Just at the close of the introductory service, a black gown lying over the arm of the sofa caught his eye. He was rising to deliver his sermon, when it forced itself on his attention again. " ' Sure enough,' thought he, ' Dutch Reformed clerg}'men do wear gowns. I might as well put it on.' " So he solemnly thrust himself into the malicious (as you would say) garment, and went through the services as well as he could, considering that his audience seemed singularly agitated, and indeed on the point of bursting out into a general laugh, throughout the entire service. And no wonder! The good Doctor in his zeal for conformity, had attired himself in the black cam- bric duster in which the pulpit was shrouded during week-days, and had been gesticulating his eloquent homily with his arms thrust through the holes left for the pulpit-lamps ! " OON CRITEEK DE BERNHARDT. 447 OON CRITEEK. DE BERNHARDT. BY EUGENE FIELD. The reappearance of Sara Bernhardt in the midst of us has, of course, set our best society circles into a flutter of excitement; and we have been highly edified by the various criticisms which we have heard passed upon that gifted woman's performance 01 " Fedora " night before last. All these criticisms have flavored of that directness, that frankness, and that rugged discrimination which are so characteristic of true Western culture. Col. J. M. Hill, the esteemed lessee of the Columbia Theatre, told us .some weeks ago that his object in securing a season of Bernhardt was to give a series of entertainments which would appeal for appre- ciation and for patronage to the intellectuality of our creme dc la creme, and which would be several degrees above the comprehen- sion of the hoi polloi. We noticed last Monday evening that the hoi polloi were not on hand to welcome the French artiste; and we were ineffably pained to notice, too, that the creme de la creme was very meagrely represented. This amazed as well as pained us: if Sara Bernhardt cannot pack the Columbia at Col. Hill's popular prices, who, by the memory of Racine and Moliere ! who — we ask in all solemnity — who can ? And what amazed us, furthermore — perhaps we should say what shocked us — was the exceeding frigidity with which the select few of our crime dc la creme received the superb bits of art which Sara Bernhardt threw out, much as an emery wheel emits beauteous vari-colored sparks. " Zis eez awful !" exclaimed Sara to her stage-manager, as she came off the stage after the first act of " Fedora." " Ze play eez in Russia, but ze audiongce eez in ze circle polaire !" It strikes us that Sara was pretty nearly correct: but for the date on the play-bill, we might have surmised that our French friends were performing amid the surroundings of the glacial period. " Ze play eez 'Fedora,'" said Sara to M. le General Carson, entre acte, " ze artiste eez Bernhardt, and ze audiongce eez ' Les Miserables !' " M. le General came right out and told this to distinguished 448 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. friends in the lobby. He said it was a bong mo; but young Horace McVicker, who once conducted a Paris-green manufac- tory in California^ and therefore is an accomplished French scholar, corrected M. le General by alleging that Sara's witticism was not a bong mo, but a judy spree. THE CRITICS. The Markeesy di Pullman applauded the famous actress a great deal after he had once located her. In order to make sure of doing the proper thing, he applauded every woman that appeared on the stage; and by the time the second act was fairly under way, he was able to identify the "cantatreese " (as he called her) by the color of her hair. " But," he remarked to his friend, M. le Colonnel Potter Palmer, later in the evening, "I don't mind OON CRITEEK DE BERNHARDT. 449 telling you that I don't like her as well as I do Patti; and as for this man, Sardoo " — "Sardoo? Who's he?" interrupted M. le Colonnel Palmer. "Why, he's the man who wrote this piece! " said the Markeesy; " and he doesn't hold a candle to our Italian poets, Danty and Bockashyo." "I don't know anything about such things," said M. le Colon- nel Palmer, meekly. " As for myself, I like to be amused when I go to a show; and I presume I'd like this woman very much if I could see her in one of the fine old English comedies, such as the ' Bunch of Keys,' or the ' Rag Baby.'" Now, while these two distinguished personages were aware that the play was " Fedora," there were many in the auditorium who had not very clear convictions on this point. M. Thomas J. Hooper, the prominent linseed-oil manufacturer (whose palatial residence on Prairie Avenue is the Mecca of our most cultured society) — M. Hooper, we say, sat through three acts without dreaming that the play was " Fedora." " I like Clara Morris better in this role," said he to I\I. T. Des- plaines Wiggins, one of the vice-presidents of the Chicago Liter- ary Club. " But, my dear fellow," said M. Wiggins, in a tone of expostu- lation, " Clara Morris never played that part!" " Never played ' Cameel ?' " cried M. Hooper. " Why, bless you, man, I seen her do it right here in this theatre !" "But this isn't 'Cameel,' " said M. Wiggins, "it's ' Feedorer.'" " Well, now, I'll bet you fifty it's ' Cameel,' " said M. Hooper, calmly but firmly. M. Wiggins covered the wager, and M. Billy Lyon decided in favor of Wiggins and " Fedora." " I knew I was right," exclaimed M. Wiggins, triumphantly, " for I saw it on the programme." M. Hooper was very much put out. "You don't pronounce that word right, anyway," he muttered, sulkily. "What word ?" demanded M. Wiggins, hotly. " That word programmay," said M. Hooper, "It's French; and it isn't program, but programmay." They wagered fifty dollars on it between them, and referred it to M. Jean McConnell. " At popular prices it's program," said M. McConnell; "but during this engagement it's programmay, sure." m-^ I 450 ilA4AVv' It'AIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. So M. Hooper scared himself financially; and M. Wiggins went down to his sit in the parquettay, muttering something that sounded vcrv ' • a profane and inexcusable rhyme for pro- gram. But, as we have 1 ited above, M. Hooper was not the only one in the audience wh..vas unsettled as to what the play was, and what it was all nbi . Throughout the auditorium, messieurs, mesdamcsand mad loiselles were sadly bothered to know whether it was " Cameel " > " Faydorah " or " Tayodorah " or " Fru-Fru " or some other m<>i from the Bernhardt repertevoi. M. James M. Billings, the \)\^ linent restaurateur, told his family that the bill had been chamM, and that the piece was " Jennie Saper." "Why, no, 'tain pa," protested Mdlle. Billings, " it's 'Fay- dorah.' " " Now, look her Birdie," said M. Billings, sternly, " I know what I'm talking ;i ut. the men in the ent wha Saper;' and he ki v, fo: "Our seats," s;i M. back that we had fficult but from what I n't iiear, English than Rhe.i-at an than I ever could hea." M. le Colonnel -'itzgeral " It may be my fa l, howevi in my French, ha\ ^ paid treal in the summc of 1880. tions ' along with vt to-night, I hadn't got half though the Fedora was dying . the last act course there werta good many^ familiar, such as *oyla,' * toot 'pardong,' 'bong lour,' and 'wee it, that whenever heard these old f: nicest and the heaiest discriminatir Now, all these oticisms and featu many more such) iterested us — or, a But we were grievl to discover a dispo shong ?) on the jrt of the audience, Fedcra with Fann Davenport's. To ins. comin' in, I asked one of was, and he said, 'Jennif nchman." n Boothby, " were so ' t what Burnhart s that she spoke b derstand her ing disaf am \ 1 vi DC OON CRITEEK DE BERNIIADT. 451 \^^ son would be a sore injustice to both ladi(. Bernhardt and Davenport represent two very different dramac schools : one is the school of avoirdupois, and the other is esmtially so different that it must be estimated only under the acoted rules of troy weight. To be more explicit, we will say th:, while you would properly weigh Miss Davenport's art on a ha-scales, you must use a more delicate machine if you would set to learn the true magnitude and concinnity of Bernhardt's ar It is quite true that to both Fedoras the same amount of pntical appreciation is paid her in Chicago. When Miss Davenport 1 lyed " Fedora " at the Columbia Theatre last January, she wasipplauded raptur- ously by 2,000 delighted tradesfolk at 50 Bemhardt's score," says he, "is interspersed throughout with < pianissimo,' ' con moto,' and 'andante.' On the other hand, the music of Davenport's Fedora is in big black type, and every other bar is labelled ' forte ' or ' fortissimo ; ' and our trombone- player blew himself into a hemorrhage last Januar)-, trying to keep up with the rest of the orchestra in the death-struggle in the last act." We can see that Bernhardt labors under one serious disadvan- tage, and that is the fact that her plays are couched in a foreign lanaua^e. We asked Col. T. M. Hill why Sardoo did not write his plays in English, and he said he supposed it was because Sardoo was a Frenchman. This may be all very well for Paris, but we opine that it will not do in Chicago. What protection has a Chicago audience in a case of this kind ? What assurance have we that, while we are admiring this woman' s art, the woman herself is not brazenly guying and blackguarding us in her absurd foreign language ? Now, we would not seek to create the impression that Sardoo's work is not meritorious : on the contrar}-, we are free to say, and we say it boldly, that we recognize considerable merit in it. We fancy, however, that Sardoo is not always original : we find him making use of a good many lines that certainly were not born of his creative genius. As we remember now, Sardoo introduces into his dialogue the very " pardonnez-moy," the very "mong- du," and the very "too zhoors," which we hear ever}' day in our best society ; and will he have the effrontery to deny that he has stolen from us — ay, brazenly stolen from us — the very " wee-wee " which is the grand commerical basis upon which Chicago culture stands and defies all competition ? Oh, how glad — how proud — Chicago is that Bronson Howard, and William Shakespeare, and Charley Hoyt, and her other favorite dramatists, have been content to put their plays in honest but ennobling Anglo-Saxon ! LECTURES ON ASTRONOMY. 455 The Solar System is so called, not because we believe it to be the sole system of the kind in existence, but from its principal body the Sun ; the Latin name of which is Sol. (Thus we read of Sol Smith, literally meaning the son of Old Smith.) On a close examination of the Heavens, we peroeive numerous brilliant stars which shine with a steady light (differing from those which sur- round them, which are always twinkling like a dew-drop on a cucumber-vine), and which, moreover, do not preserve constantly the same relative distance from the stars near which they are first discovered. These are the planets of the Solar System, which have no light of their own — of which the Earth, on which we reside, is one — which shine by light reflected from the Sun — ■ and which regularly move around that body at different intervals of time and through different ranges in space. Up to the time of a gentleman named Copernicus, who flourished about the middle of the Fifteenth Century, it was supposed- by our stupid ancestors that the Earth was the centre of all creation, being a large flat body, resting on a rock which rested on another rock, and so on "all the way down," and that the Sun, planets and immovable stars all revolved about it once in twenty-four hours. This reminds us of the simplicity of a child we once saw in a railroad-car, who fancied itself perfectly stationary, and thought the fences, houses and fields were tearing past it at the rate of thirty mile^an hour ; and poking out its head, to see where on earth they went to, had its hat — a very nice one with pink ribbons — knocked off and irrecoverably lost. But Copernicus (who was a son of Daniel Pernicus, of the firm of Pernicus & Co., wool dealers, and who was named Co. Pernicus, out of respect to his father's partners) soon set this matter to rights, and started the idea of the present Solar System, which, greatly improved since his day, is occasionally called the Copernican system. By this system we learn that the Sun is stationed at on^ focus (not hocus, as it is rendered, without authority, by the philosopher Partington) of an ellipse, where it slowly grinds on for ever about its own axis, while the planets, turning about their axes, revolve in elliptical orbits of various dimensions and different planes of inclination around it. The demonstration of this system in all its perfection was left to Isaac Newton, an English Philosopher, who, seeing an apple tumble down from a tree, was led to think thereon with such 45^ MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. gravity, that he finally discovered the attraction of gravitation, which proved to be the great law of Nature that keeps every thing in its place. Thus we see that as an apple originally brought sin and ignorance into the world, the same fruit proved thereafter the cause of vast knowledge and enlightenment — and, indeed, we may doubt whether any other fruit but an apple, and a sour one at that, would have produced these great results — for, had the fallen fruit been a pear, an orange, or a peach, there is little doubt that Newton would have eaten it up and thought no more on the subject. As in this world you will hardly ever find a man so small but that he has some one else smaller than he to look up to and revolve around him, so in the Solar System we find that the majority of the planets have one or more smaller planets revolving about them. These small bodies are termed secondaries, moons or satellites — the planets themselves being called primaries. We know at present of eighteen primaries; viz., Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Flora, Vesta, Iris, Metis, Hebe, Astrea, Juno, Ceres, Pallas, Hygeia, Jupiter, Saturn, Herschel, Neptune, and another unnamed. There are distributed among these, nineteen secondaries, all of which, except our Moon, are invis- ible to the naked eye. We shall now proceed to consider, separately, the different bodies composing the Solar System, and to make *known what little information, comparatively speaking, science has collected regarding them. And first in order, as in place, we come to THE SUN. This glorious orb may be seen almost any clear day, by look- ing intently in its direction, through a piece of smoked glass. Through this medium it appears about the size of a large orange, and of much the same color. It is, however, somewhat larger, being, in fact, §87,000 miles in diameter, and containing a volume of matter equal to fourteen hundred thousand globes of the size of the Earth, which is certainly a matter of no small importance. Through the telescope it appears like an enormous globe of fire, with many spots upon its surface, which, unlike those of the leopard, are continually changing. These spots were first dis- covered by a gentleman named Galileo, in the year 161 1. Though the Sun is usually termed and considered the luminary LECTURES ON' ASTRONOMY. 457 of day, it may not be uninteresting to our readers to know that it certainly has been seen in the night. A scientific friend of ours from New England (Mr. R. W. Emerson) while traveling through the northern part of Norway, with a cargo of tinware, on the 2ist of June, 1836, distinctly saw the Sun in all its majesty, shining at midnight I — in fact, shining all night! Emerson is not what you would call a superstitious man, by any means — but he left! Since that time many persons have observed its noctur- nal appearance in that part of the country, at the same time of the year. This phenomenon has never been witnessed in the latitude of San Diego, however, and it is very improbable that it ever will be. Sacred history informs us that a distinguished military man named Joshua once caused the Sun to " stand still;" how he did it, is not mentioned. There can, of course, be no doubt of the fact that he arrested its progress, and possibly caused it to "stand stiW^ — but translators are not always perfectly accurate, and we are inclined to the opinion that it might have wiggled a very little, when Joshua was not looking directly at it. The statement, however, does not appear so very incredible, when we reflect that seafaring men are in the habit of actually bringing the Sun do7un to the horizon every day at 12 Meridian. This they effect by means of a tool made of brass, glass and silver, called a sextant. The composition of the Sun has long been a matter of dispute. By close and accurate observation with an excellent opera-glass, we have arrived at the conclusion that its entire surface is covered with water to a great depth; which water, being com- posed by a process known at the present only to the Creator of the Universe and Mr. Paine, of Worcester, Massachusetts, gene- rates carbureted hydrogen gas, which, being inflamed, surrounds the entire body with an ocean of fire, from which we and the other planets receive our light and heat. The spots upon its surface are [^limpses of water obtained through the fire; and we call the atte: 'tion of our old friend and former schoolmate, Mr. Agassiz, to this fact; as by closely observing one of these spots with a stron;^^ refracting telescope, he may discover a new species of fish, with little fishes inside of them. It is possible that the Sun may burn out after awhile, which would leave this world in a state of darkness quite uncomfortable to contemplate; but even under these circumstances it is pleasant to reflect that courting 45S MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. and love-making would probably increase to an indefinite extent, and that many persons would make large fortunes by the sudden rise in value of coal, wood, candles and gas, which would go to illustrate the truth of the old proverb, " It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good." Upon the whole, the Sun is a glorious creation; pleasing to gaze upon (through smoked glass), elevating to think upon, and exceedingly comfortable to every created being on a cold day; it is the largest, the brightest, and may be considered by far the most magnificent object in the celestial sphere; though with all these attributes it must be confessed that it is occasionally entire- ly eclipsed by the moon. CHAPTER II. We shall now proceed to the consideration of the several planets. MERCURY. This planet, with the exception of the asteroids, is the smallest of the system. It is the nearest to the Sun, and, in consequence, cannot be seen (on account of the Sun's superior light) except at its greatest eastern and western elongations, which occur in March and April, August and September, when it may be seen for a short time immediately after sunset and shortly before sun- rise. It then appears like a star of the first magnitude, having a white twinkling light, and resembling somewhat the star Regulus in the constellation Leo. The day in Mercury is about ten minutes longer than ours, its year is about equal to three of our months. It receives six and a half times as much heat from the Sun as we do; from which we conclude that the climate must be very similar to that of Fort Yuma, on the Colorado River. The difficulty of communication with Mercury will probably prevent its ever being selected as a military post; though it possesses many advantages for that purpose, being extremely inaccessible, inconvenient, and, doubtless, singularly uncomfortable. It receives its name from the God, Mercury, in the Heathen Mythol- ogy, who is the patron and tutelary Divinity of San Diego County. LECTURES ON ASTRONOMY. 459 VENUS. This beautiful planet may be seen either a little after sunset, or shortly before sunrise, according as it becomes the morning or evening star, but never departing quite 48° from the Sun. Its day is about twenty-five minutes shorter than ours; its year seven and a half months, or thirty-two weeks. The diameter of Venus MARS AND VENUS.^ is 7,700 miles, and she receives from the Sun thrice as much light and heat as the Earth. An old Dutchman named Schroeter spent more than ten years in observations on this planet, and finally discovered a mountain on it twenty-two miles m height, but he never could discover any thing on the mountain, not even a mouse, and finally died about as wise as when he commenced his studies. Venus, in Mythology, was a Goddess of singular beauty, who became the wife of Vulcan, the blacksmith, and, we regret to add^ 460 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. behaved in the most immoral manner after her marriage. The celebrated case of Vulcan vs. Mars, and the consequent scandal, is probably still fresh in the minds of our readers. By a large portion of society, however, she was considered an ill-used and persecuted lady, against whose high tone of morals and strictly virtuous conduct not a shadow of suspicion could be cast; Vul- can, by the same parties, was considered a horrid brute, and they all agreed that it served him right when he lost his case and had to pay the costs of court. Venus still remains the Goddess of Beauty, and not a few of her proteges may be found in California. THE EARTH. The Earth, or as the Latins called it, Tellus (from which originated the expression, " do tell us,") is the third planet in the Solar System, and the one on which we subsist, with all our important joys and sorrows. The San Diego Herald \'a'^\x\)X\^\it^ weekly on this planet, for five dollars per annum, payable invari- ably in advance. As the Earth is by no means the most impor- tant planet in the system, there is no reason to suppose that it is particularly distinguished from the others by being inhabited. It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude, that all the other planets of the system are filled with living, moving and sentient beings; and as some of them are superior to the Earth in size and posi- tion, it is not improbable that their inhabitants may be superior to us in physical and mental organization. But if this were a demonstrable fact, instead of a mere hypoth- esis, it would be found a very difficult matter to persuade us of its truth. To the inhabitants of Venus, the Earth appears like a brilliant star, very much, in fact, as Venus appears to us; and, reasoning from analogy, we are led to believe that the election of Mr. Pierce, the European war, or the split in the great Demo- cratic party produced but very little excitement among them. To the inhabitants of Jupiter, our important globe appears like a small star of the fourth or fifth magnitude. We recollect some years ago gazing with astonishment upon the inhabitants of a drop of water, developed by the Solar Microscope, and secretly wondermg whether they were or not reasoning beings, with souls to be saved. It is not altogether a pleasant reflection that a highly scientific inhabitant of Jupiter, armed with a telescope of LECTURES ON ASTRONOMY. 461 (to us) inconceivable form, may be pursuing a similar course of inquiry, and indulging in similar speculations regarding our Earth and its inhabitants. Gazing with curious eye, his attention is suddenly attracted by the movements of a grand celebration of Fourth of July in New York, or a mighty convention in Balti- more. '■'■ God bless my soul ! " he exclaims; " I declare, they're alive, these little creatures; do see them wriggle ! " To an inhab- itant of the Sun, however, he of Jupiter is probably quite as insignificant, and the Sun man is possibly a mere atom in the opinion of a dweller in Sirius. A little reflection on these sub- jects leads to the opinion, that the death of an individual man on this Earth, though perhaps as important an event as can occur to himself, is calculated to cause no great convulsion of Nature, or disturb particularly the great aggregate of created beings. The earth moves round the sun from west to east in a year, and turns on its axis in a day; thus moving at the rate of 68,000 miles an hour in its orbit, and rolling around at the tolerably rapid rate of 1,040 miles per hour. As our readers may have seen that when a man is galloping a horse violently over a smooth road, if the horse, from viciousness or other cause, suddenly stops, the man keeps on at the same rate over the animal's head; so we, supposing the Earth to be suddenly arrested on its axis — men, women, children, horses, cattle and sheep, donkeys, editors and members of Congress, with all our goods and chattels — would be thrown off into the air at the speed of 173 miles a minute, every mother's son of us describing the arc of a parabola, which is probably the only description we should ever be able to give of the affair. The catastrophe, to one sufficiently collected to enjoy it, would doubtless be exceedingly amusing; but as there would probably be no time for laughing, we pray that it may not occur until after our demise; when, should it take place, our monument will prob- ably accompany the movement. It is a singular fact, that if a man travel round the Earth in an eastwardly direction, he will find, on returning to the place of departure, he has gained one whole day; the reverse of this proposition being true also, it follows that the Yankees, who are constantly traveling to the West, do not live as long by a day or two as they would if they had staid at home; and supposing each Yankee's time to be worth $1.50 per day, it may be easily shown that a consider- 462 MJRJC TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. able amount of money is annually lost by their roving disposi- tions. Science is yet but in its infancy; with its growth, new discov- eries of an astounding nature will doubtless be made, among which, probably, will be some method by which the course of the Earth may be altered, and it be steered with the same ease and regularity through space and among the stars as a steamboat is now directed in the water. It will be a very interesting spectacle to see the Earth "rounding to," with her head to the air, off Jupiter, while the moon is sent off laden with mails and passengers for that planet, to bring back the return mails and a large party of rowdy Jupiterians going to attend a grand prize fight in the ring of Saturn. Well, Christopher Columbus would have been just as much astonished at a revelation of the steamboat and the locomotive engine as we should be to witness the above performance, which our intelligent posterity during the ensuing year, a. d. 2,000, will possibly look upon as a very ordinary and commonplace affair. Only three days ago we asked a medium where Sir John Franklin was at that time; to which he replied he was cruising about (officers and crew all well) on the interior of the Earth, to which he had obtained entrance through Symmes Hole ! With a few remarks upon the Earth's satellite, we conclude the first Lecture on Astronomy; the remainder of the course being contained in a second Lecture, treating of the planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, the Asteroids, and the fixed stars, which last, being " fixings," are, according to Mr, Charles Dickens, American property. THE MOON. This resplendent luminary, like a youth on the 4th of July, has its first quarter; like a ruined spendthrift, its last quarter; and, like an omnibus, is occasionally full and new. Tlie evenings on which it appears between these last stages are beautifully illu- mined by its clear, mellow light. The Moon revolves in an elliptical orbit about the Earth in twenty-nine days, twelve hours, forty-four minutes and three sec- onds— the time which elapses between one new Moon and another. It was supposed by the ancient philosophers that the Moon was made of green cheese, an opinion still entertained by the credu- LECTURES ON ASTRONOMY. 46^ lous and ignorant. Kepler and Tycho Brahe, however, held to »:he opinion that it was composed of Charlotte Russe, the dark por- tions of its surface being sponge cake, the light blanc mange. Modern advances in science, and the use of Lord Rosse's famous telescope, have demonstrated the absurdity of all these specula- tions by proving conclusively that the Moon is mainly composed of the Ferro — sesqui — cyanuret, of the cyanide of potassium I Up to the latest dates from the Atlantic States, no one has succeeded in reaching the Moon. Should any one do so hereafter, it will probably be a woman, as the sex will never cease making an exer- tion for that purpose as long as there is a man in it. Upon the whole, we may consider the moon an excellent insti- tution, among the many we enjoy under a free, republican form of government, and it is a blessed thing to reflect that the Presi- dent of the United States cannot veto it, no matter how strong an inclination he may feel, from principle or habit, to do so. It has been ascertained beyond a doubt that the Moon has no air. Consequently, the common expressions, " the Moon was gazing down with an air of benevolence," or with " an air of com- placency," or with " an air of calm superiority," are incorrect and objectionable, the fact being that the moon has no air at all. The existence of the celebrated " Man in the Moon " has been frequently questioned by modern philosophers. The whole sub- ject is involved in doubt and obscurity. The only authority we have for believing that such an individual exists, and has been seen and spoken with, is a fragment of an old poem composed by an ancient Astronomer 'by ^^^ name of Goose, which has been handed down to us as follows: "The man in the Moon, came down too soon To inquire the way to Norwich ; The man in the South, he burned his mouth, Eating cold, hot porridge. " The evidence conveyed in this distich is, however, rejected by the skeptical among modern Astronomers, who consider the pas- sage an allegory — "The man in the South" being supposed typical of the late John C. Calhoun, and the " cold, hot porridge " alluded to the project of nullification. END OF LECTURE FIRST. Note by the Author. — Itinerant Lectui'ers are cautioned against making use of the above production, without obtaining the necessary authority from 464 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. the proprietors of the Piotieer Magazine. To those who may obtain such authority, it may be well to state that at the close of the Lecture it was the intention of the author to exhibit and explain to the audience an orrery, accom- panying and interspersing his remarks by a choice selection of popular airs on the hand-organ. An economical orrery may be constructed by attaching eighteen wires of graduated lengths to the shaft of a candlestick, apples of different sizes being placed at their extremities to represent the Planets, and a central orange, rest- ing on the candlestick, representing the Sun. An orrery of this description is, however, liable to the objection that, if handed around among the audience for examination, it is seldom returned uninjured. The author has known an instance in which a child four years of age, on an occasion of this kind, devoured in succession the planets Jupiter and Herschel, and bit a large spot out of the Sun, before he could be arrested. THE DIAMOND WEDDING. 465 THE DIAMOND WEDDING. BY EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. g^DMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN, a writer who has made a threefold lame, in poetry, criticism and journalism, was born at Hartford, October 8, 1833. He is a member of the New York Stock Exchange, where he is busy throughout the day, giving his evenings to literature. He has always worked hard, with a high ideal, and his writings are expressive of his fine scholarship and his rare gifts. ' ' The Diamond Wedding " was called forth by the marriage of a beautiful New Yorker and a rich Cuban, the sensation of thirty years ago. O Love ! Love ! Love ! what times were those, Long ere the age of belles and beaux, And Brussels lace and silken hose, When, in the green Arcadian close, You married Psyche under the rose, With only the grass for bedding ! Heart to heart, and hand to hand, You followed Nature's sweet command, Roammg lovingly through the land. Nor sighed for a Diamond Wedding, So have we read, in classic Ovid, How Hero watched for her beloved, Impassioned youth, Leander, She was the fairest of the fair, And wrapt him round with her golden hair, Whenever he landed cold and bare. With nothing to eat and nothing to wear. And wetter than any gander; For Love was Love, and better than money; The slyer the theft, the sweeter the honey; And kissing was clover, all the world over, Where ver Cupid might wander. So thousands of years have come and gone, And still the moon is shining on, Still Hymen's torch is lighted; 466 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. And hitherto, in this land of the West, Most couples in love have thought it best To follow the ancient way of the rest, And quietly get united. But now, True Love, you're growing old — Bought and sold, with silver and gold. Like a house, or a horse and carriage ! Midnight talks. Moonlight walks. The glance of the eye and sweetheart sigh, The shadowy haunts, with no one by, I do not wish to disparage; But every kiss Has a price for its bliss, In the modern code of marriage; And the compact sweet Is not complete Till the high contracting parties meet Before the altar of Mammon; And the bride must be led to a silver bower, AVhere pearls and rubies fall in a shower That would frighten Jupiter Ammon ! I need not tell How it befell, (Since Jenkins has told the story Over and over and over again. In a style I cannot hope to attain. And covered himself with glory !) How it befell, one summer's day, The king of the Cubans strolled this way — King January's his name, they say — And fell in love with the Princess May, The reigning belle of Manhattan; Nor how he began to smirk and sue. And dress as lovers who come to woo. Or as Max Maretzek and Jullien do, When they sit full-bloomed in the ladies' view, And flourish the wondrous baton. THE DIAMOND WEDDING. He wasn't one of your Polish nobles, Whose presence their country somehow troubles, And so our cities receive them; Nor one of your make-believe Spanish grandees. Who ply our daughters with lies and candies, Until the poor girls believe them. No, he was no such charlatan — Count de Hoboken Flash-in-the-pan, Full of gasconade and bravado — But a regular, rich Don Rataplan, Santa Claus de la Muscovado, Sehor Grandissimo Bastinado. His was the rental of half Havana And all Matanzas; and Santa Anna, Rich as he was, could hardly hold A candle to light the mines of gold Our Cuban owned, choke-full of diggers; And broad plantations, that, in round figures. Were stocked with at least five thousand niggers ! *' Gather ye rosebuds while ye may !" The Sefior swore to carry the day, To capture the beautiful Princess May, With his battery of treasure; Velvet and lace she should not lack; Tiffany, Haughwout, Ball & Black, Genin and Stewart his suit should back, And come and*go at her pleasure; Jet and lava — silver and gold — Garnets — emeralds rare to behold — Diamonds — sapphires — wealth untold — All were hers, to have and to hold: Enough to fill a peck-m'easure ! He didn't bring all his forces on At once, but like a crafty old Don, Who many a heart had fought and won, Kept bidding a little higher; And every time he made his bid, And what she said, and all they did — 467 468 MARK 7'WAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. 'Twas written down, For the good of the town, By Jeems, of The Daily Flyer. A coach and horses, you'd think, would buy For the Don an easy victory; But slowly our Princess yielded. A diamond necklace caught her eye. But a wreath of pearls first made her sigh. She knew the worth of each maiden glance. And, like young colts, that curvet and prance, She led the Don a deuce of a dance. In spite of the wealth he wielded. She stood such a fire of silks and laces, Jewels and gold dressing-cases, And ruby brooches, and jets and pearls, That every one of her dainty curls Brought the price of a hundred common girls; Folks thought the lass demented ! But at last a wonderful diamond ring, An infant Koh-i-noor, did the thing, And, sighing with love, or something the same, (What's in a name ?) The Princess May consented. Ring ! ring the bells, and bring The people to see the marrying ! Let the gaunt and hungry and ragged poor Throng round the great cathedral door. To wonder what all the hubbub's for. And sometimes stupidly wonder At so much sunshine and brightness, which Fall from the church upon the rich, While the poor get all the thunder. Ring, ring ! merry bells, ring ! O fortunate few. With letters blue, Good for a seat and a nearer view ! Fortunate few, whom 1 dare not name; JDilettantl ! Crime de la creme ! THE DIAMOND WEDDING. We commoners stood by the street fajade, And caught a glimpse of the cavalcade. We saw the bride In diamonded pride, With jeweled maidens to guard her side — Six lustrous maidens in tarletan. She led the van of the caravan; Close behind her, her mother (Dressed in gorgeous moire antique, That told, as plainly as words could speaK, She was more antique than the other) Leaned on the arm of Don Rataplan Santa Clans de la Muscovado, Senor Grandissimo Bastinado. Happy mortal ! fortunate man ! And Marquis of El Dorado ! In they swept, all riches and grace, Silks and satins, jewels and lace; In they swept from the dazzled sun, And soon in the church the deed was done. Three prelates stood on the chancel high: A knot that gold and silver can buy. Gold and silver may yet untie. Unless it is tightly fastened; What's worth doing at all 's worth doing well, And the sale of a young Manhattan belle Is not to be pushed or hastened; So two Very-Reverends graced the scene, And the tall Archbishop stood between. By prayer and fasting chastened. The Pope himself would have come from Rome, But Garibaldi kept him at home. Haply these robed prelates thought Their words were the power that tied the knot; But another power that love-knot tied, And I saw the chain round the neck of the bride — A glistening, priceless, marvelous chain, Coiled with diamonds again and again. As befits a diamond wedding; Yet still 'twas a chain, and I thought she knew it, 469 4.70 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. And halfway longed for the will to undo it, By the secret tears she was shedding. But isn't it odd to think, whenever We all go through that terrible River — Whose sluggish tide alone can sever (The Archbishop says) the Church decree, By floating one into Eternity And leaving the other alive as ever — As each wades through that ghastly stream, The satins that rustle and gems that gleam. Will grow pale and heavy, and sink away To the noisome River's bottom-clay! Then the costly bride and her maidens six Will shiver upon the bank of the Styx, Quite as helpless as they were born — Naked souls, and very forlorn; The Princess, then, must shift for herself, And lay her royalty on the shelf; She, and the beautiful Empress, yonder. Whose robes are now the wide world's wonder, And even ourselves, and our dear little wives, Who calico wear each morn of their lives. And the sewing-girls, and les chiffonniers, In rags and hunger — a gaunt array — And all the grooms of the caravan — Ay, even the great Don Rataplan Santa Claus de la Muscovado Sefior Grandissimo Bastinado — That gold-encrusted, fortunate man — All will land in naked equality: The lord of a ribboned principality Will mourn the loss of his cordoti; Nothing to eat and nothing to v/ear M'ill certainly be the fashion there ! Ten to one, and I'll go it alone; Those most used to a rag z^A bone. Though here on earth they labor and groan, Will stand it best, as they wade abreast To the other side of Jordan. 1859. LITTLE CHARLES AND THE FRUIT. 471 LITTLE CHARLES AND THE FRUIT. One day when little Charles, the good boy of whom I have told you, was on his way to school, he passed by a large orchard in which there were a great many kinds of fruit, and as the sun- shine came streaming through the branches of the trees and fell upon the rosy-cheeked apples, the sweet, mellow peaches, and the red cherries, Charles thought they looked very beautiful indeed, and would go down nicely with the lunch which his kind mother A WARM RECEPTION. had wrapped up in a white napkin for him, and placed in the little basket he carried in his hand. Some of the fruit hung very near the fence, and as Charles looked at it wishfully he said to himself: " How easily I could climb over there and pluck several of the apples and pears with- out being discovered, for there is no one in the orchard now. But that would be wrong, and if I did it I should always be sorry, and suffer dreadfully from the pangs of conscience." So he stood there a little longer. The little birds in the trees were singing their merriest lays, the soft and balmy zephyrs of early summer were kissing the flowers as they nodded their pretty heads in the grass by the roadside, and all nature seemed rejoic- ing in its strength. 472 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Many times Charles looked up at the fruit, and thought hov/ easy it would be to take it, but every time he did this the small voice would say: " That would be wr?ncr, Charles," and he would resolve not to make any such break. But pretty soon a bright thought struck him, ard his pure young face lighted up with a sunny smile. " I will go to the owner of the orchard," he said, " who lives in yonder house, and tell him how I have conquered temptation. Then he will give me all the fruit I want, because that is the way sturdy farm- ers always do in the little books I get at Sunday-school.'' So he vv-ent boldly up to the farm-house, %l/l, but just as he entered the gate a fierce dog grabbed him by the seat of his panties and wiped the ground with him for a few moments. The nice lunch that his mother had put up for him was distributed a 1 1 over the yard, and his new jacket looked as if it had been out with the boys. When the farmer heard the noise he came running out of the house and called off the dog. "What do you want, my little man?" he said to Charles. So Charles told him he had been tempted to take the fruit, but would not do so because it was wrong. And then he asked the man for some fruit. The farmer looked at him for a moment, and then he said: "I have two more dogs, both larger than the one you tackled, and unless you are out of here in three jerks of a lamb's tail, they will be lunching, and you will be quite conspicuous in the bill-of-fare." THOMAS TOUGH. LITTLE CHARLES AND THE FRUIT. 47^ So Charles ran quickly away, not even stopping to ge his bas- ket. A little way down the road he overtook Thomas Tough, who was eating a delicious peach. " Where did you get that peach, Thomas ? " asked Charles. "Over in that orchard," replied Thomas. " I waited until the Old Crank who owns the place had gone to breakfast, and then appointed myself receiver of the orchard." "You are a very wicked boy," said Charles. "Yes," replied Thomas, "I am a trifle wicked, but I keep Get- ting to the Front all the time, and my clothes don't seem quite so much Disarranged as yours. You will also notice that my Lunch Basket is with me, and that my piece of Pie for the Noon- day Meal is not lying in Farmer Brown's Garden." When Charles went home that evening he told his Papa what he had done. "You know. Papa," he said, "that I would sooner be right than President." " Yes," replied his Papa, " but I am not seriously alarmed about your being President either." — Chicago Tribune. Thare iz nothing that yu and I make so menny blunders about, and the world so few, az the aktual amount ov our import- ance. Josh Billings. 474 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. OUR ITALIAN GUIDE. BY MARK TWAIN. In this connection I wish to say one word about Michael Angeio Buonarotti — I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angeio — that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture — great in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angeio for breakfast — for luncheon — for dinner — for tea — for supper — for between meals. I like a change^ occasionally. In Genoa, he designed every thing; in Milan, he or his pupils designed every thing; he designed the Lake of Como; in Padua, Verona, Venice, Bologna, who did we ever hear of, from guides, but Michael Angeio ? In Florence, he painted every thing, designed every thing, nearly, and what he did not design he used to sit on a favorite stone and look at, and they showed us the stone. In Pisa, he designed every thing but the old shot-tower, and they would have attributed that to him if it had not been so awfully out of the perpendicular. He designed the piers of Leghorn and the custom-house regulations of Civita Vecchia. But here — here it is frightful. He designed St, Peter's; he designed the Pope; he designed the Pantheon, the uniform of the Pope's soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the Colis- eum, the Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock, the Barberini Palace, St. John Lateran, the Campagna, the Appian Way, the Seven Hills, the Baths of Caracalla, the Claudian Aqueduct, the Cloaca Max- ima— the eternal bore designed the Eternal City, and unless al) men and books do lie, he painted every thing in it ! Dan said the other day to the guide, '' Enough, enough, enough ! Say no more ! Lump the whole thing ! say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angeio ! ' ' I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angeio was dead. But we have taken it out of this guide. He has marched us through miles of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and through miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has shown us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to fresco the heavens — OUR ITALIAN GUIDE. 4^.- pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with him we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for us imbecility and idiotic questions. These creatures never suspect — they have no idea of a sarcasm. He shows us a figure and says: " Statoo brunzo." (Bronze statue.) We look at it indifferently, and the doctor asks: ''By Michael Angelo?" " No — not know who." Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum. The doctor asks: " Michael Angelo ? " A siare from the guide. " No—thousan' year before he is born." Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again: "■ Michael Angelo?" " Oh, mon dim, genteelmen ! Zis is two thousan' year before }ie is born ! " He grows so tired of that unceasing question, sometimes, that he dreads to show us anything at all. The wretch has tried all the ways he can think of to make us comprehend that Michael Angelo is only responsible for the creation of ^part of the world, but somehow he has not succeeded yet. Relief for overtasked eyes and brain from study and sight-seeing is necessary, or we shall become idiotic sure enough. Therefore this guide must continue to suffer. If he does not enjoy it, so much the worse for him. We do. In this place I may as well jot down a chapter concerning those necessary nuisances, European guides. Many a man has wished in his heart he could do without his guide; but knowing he could not, has wished he could get some amusement out of him as a remuneration for the affliction of his society. We accomplished this latter matter, and if our experience can be made useful to others, they are welcome to it. The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion, before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he had swallowed a spring mattress. He was full of animation — full of impatience. He said: " Come wis me genteelmen ! — come I I show you ze letter Writing by Christopher Colombo ! — write it himself ! — write it wis his own hand ! — come ! " 476 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread before us. The guide's eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the parchment with his finger: "What I tell you, genteelmen ! Is it not so ? See! hand- writing Christopher Colombo ! — write it himself ! " We looked indifferent — unconcerned. The doctor examined the document very deliberately, during a painful pause. Then he said, without any show of interest: << Ah — Ferguson — what — what did you say was the name of the party who wrote this ? " "Christopher Colombo ! ze great Christopher Colombo ! " Another deliberate examination. "Ah — did he write it himself, or — or how?"' " He write it himself ! — Christopher Colombo ! he's own hand- writing, write by himself ! " Then the doctor laid the document down and said: " Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could write better than that." " But zis is ze great Christo — " '* I don't care who it is ! It's the worst writing I ever saw. Now you musn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out ! — and if you haven't, drive on ! " We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but he made one more venture. He had something which he thought would overcome us. He said: " Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me ! I show you beautiful, O, magnificent bust Christopher Colombo ! — splendid, grand, n\ag- nificent ! " He brought us before the beautiful bust — for it was beautiful — and sprang back and struck an attitude: "Ah, look, genteelmen ! — beautiful, grand — bust Christopher Colombo ! — beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal ! " The doctor put up his eye-glass — procured for such occasions: " Ah — what did you say this gentleman's name was ? " " Christopher Colombo ! — ze great Christopher Colombo ! " "Christopher Colombo — the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did he do ? " OUR ITALIAN GUIDE. 477 " Discover America ! — discover America. Oh, ze devil ! " <' Discover America ! No — that statement will hardly wash. We are just from America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher Colombo — pleasant name — is — is he dead ? " " Oh, corpo di Baccho ! — three hundred year !" ''What did he die of?" " I do not know ! — I can not tell." " Small-pox, think ? " " I do not know, genteelmen! — I do not know what he die of! " " Measles, likely ? " " May be — may be — I do not know — I tjiink he die of some- things." " Parents living ? " " Im-posseeble ! " " Ah — which is the bust and which is the pedestal ? " " Santa Maria ! — zis ze bust \—zis ze pedestal ! " " Ah, I see, I see— happy combination — very happy combina- tion, indeed. Is — is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?" That joke was lost on the foreigner — guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke. We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yester- day we spent three or four hours in the Vatican again, that wonderful world of curiosities. We came very near expressing interest, sometimes — even admiration — it was very hard to keep from 'L. We succeeded, though. Nobody else ever did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was bewildered— nonplussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up extraordinary things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but it was a failure ; we never showed any interest m anything. He had reserved what he considered to be his greatest wonder till the last— a royal Egyptian mummy, the best preserved in the world, perhaps. He took us there. He felt so sure, this time, that some of his old enthusiasm came back to him : " See, genteelmen ! — Mummy ! Mummy !" The eye-glass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever. " Ah— Ferguson— what did I understand you to say the gentle- man's name was ? " ■'Name ? — he got no name ! — Mummy ! — 'Gyptian mummy !" " Yes, yes. Born here?" 478 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. "No ! 'Gyptian mummy ! " " Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume ? " « No ! — not Frenchman, not Roman ! — born in Egypta ! " " Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. Foreign locality, likely. Mummy — mummy. How calm he is — how self possessed. Is, ah — is he dead ? " IS HE DEAD ?' ' " Oh, sacre bleu, been dead three thousan' year ! " The doctor turned on him savagely: " Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this ! Playing us for Chinamen because we are strangers, and trying to learn ! Trying to impose your vile second-hand carcasses on iis .' — thunder and lightning, Fve a notion to — to — if you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out ! — or, by George, we'll drain you !" Lasting reputashuns are ov a slo growth: the man who wakes up famus sum morning, iz very apt to go to bed sum night and sleep it all off. Josh Billings. SHE HAD TO TAKE HER THINGS ALONG. 4 79 SHE HAD TO TAKE HER THINGS ALONG. BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE. Erasmus T. Ruggleson, a young man of Saxon lineage, worked on a farm out here in Yellow Spring township. He was not rich^ but he was industrious, and just too pretty for anything. So was the daughter of the farmer for whom he worked. She was wealthier than Erasmus, but she was not proud. When the chores were done in the winter evenings, she went with him to the singing school, and she walked by his side to church. She loved him ; she had rather sit at her casement in the gloaming, and hear him holler "poo-oo-sy !" in long-drawn, mellow caden- ces, at the hou'- of the feeding of the swine, than hear Cam- panini sing " Macaroni del Vermicelli " from " Handorgzanhandi in Venezuela." And he — he was clean gone on her. Mashed past all surgery. When they foolishly let the old man into their plans for each other's happiness and half the farm, the wrathful agriculturist said if he heard one more word of such nonsense, just another word, he would lay that farm waste with physical havoc, and blight its winter wheat with the salt tears of his only child, and that was the kind of father-in-law he was inclined to be. Naturally, the young people determined to fly. Their plans were laid ; the night was set. So was the ladder. At its foot waited the ardent Erasmus Ruggleson, gazing at the window for the appearance of his love. Presently the window opened softly, and a face he loved appeared. '''Rasmus !" "Florence !" " Yes, dearest. Shall I drop my things right down ? " "Yes, love ; I will catch them. Let the bundles fall." The glittering starlight of the clear March night fell on Eras- mus's glad and upturned face. So did a trunk, four feet high, four feet wide, and about eight feet long. It weighed about 2,700 pounds. It contained a few " things " that no woman could be expected to travel without, and Florence had spent three weeks packing that trunk for her elopement. Erasmus Ruggleson did not scream. He did not moan, idr couldn't. He had no show. Florence came down the ladcier, 4So MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. having first, with a maidenly sense of propriety, requested her lover to turn his back and look at the barn. He was busily engaged in looking at the bottom of that trunk, and thinking how like all creation he would yell if he ever got his mouth out- doors again. Florence reached the foot of the ladder. " Did you get my trunk, Erasmus ?" she said, looking around for him. "Oh, yes!" said a hoarse mocking voice at her elbow. "Oh, yes, he got it ! Got it bad,, too !" She turned, knew her papa, shrieked once, twice, again, and once more for the boys, and fainted away. " I never wor- ried about it a minute," the heart- less old man told his neio^hbors the next day, " though I knowed well enough what was goin' on all the time. I've been married twice, an' I've married off four daughters and two sons, an' if I don't know what baggage a woman carries when she travels, by this time, I'm too old to learn." And Erasmus Ruggleson ! The jury brought in a verdict that he ca:ne to his death by habitual drunkenness, and the temper- ance paneri didn't talk about anything else for the next six weeks. HER BUNDLE. THE GARDEN AND ITS ENEMIES. 48 1 THE GARDEN AND ITS ENEMIES. BY C. D. WARNER. I LEFT my garden for a week, just at the close of the dry spell. A season of rain immediately set in, and when I returned, the transformation was wonderful. In one week, every vegetable had fairly jumped forward. The tomatoes which I left slender plants, eaten of bugs and debating whether they would go back- ward or forward, had become stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some of them had blossomed. The corn waved like that which grows so rank out of the French-English mixture at Waterloo. The squashes — I will not speak of the squashes ! The most remarkable growth was the asparagus. There was not a spear above-ground when I went away; and now it had sprung up and gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than my head. I am entirely aware of the value of words, and of moral obligations. When I say that the aspara- gus had grown six feet in seven days, I expect and wish to be believed. I am a little particular about the statement, for, if there is any prize offered for asparagus at the next agricultural fair, I wish to compete — speed to govern. What I claim is the fastest asparagus. As for eating purposes, I have seen better. A neighbor of mine, who looked in at the growth of the bed, said, "Well, he'd be d :" but I told him there was no use of affirming now; he might keep his oath till I wanted it on the asparagus affidavit. In order to have this sort of asparagus, you want to manure heavily in the early spring, fork it in, and top- dress (that sounds technical) with a thick layer of chloride of sodium: if you cannot get that, common salt will do, and the neighbors will never notice whether it is the orthodox Na. CI. 58.5 or not. I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds. They grow as if the devil was in them. I know a lady, a member of the Church and a very good sort of woman, considering the subject condition of that class, who says that the weeds work on her to that extent that, in going through her garden, she has the great- est difficulty in keeping the ten commandments in anything like an unfractured condition. I asked her which one ? but she said 482 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. all of them: one felt like breaking the whole lot. The sort of weed which I most hate (if I can be said to hate anything which grows in my garden) is the "pusley," a fat, ground-clinging, MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. spreading, greasy thing, and the most propagations (it is not my fault if the word is not in the dictionary) plant I know. I saw a Chinaman who came over with a returned missionary, and pretended to be converted, boil a lot of it in a pot, stir in eggs, THE GARDEN AND ITS ENEMIES. 483 and mix and eat it with relish — " Me likee he." It will be a good thing to keep the Chinamenon when they come to do our garden- ing. I only fear they will cultivate it at the expense of the straw- berries and melons. Who can say that other weeds which we despise may not be the favorite food of some remote people or tribe. We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible that we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in some other place. Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices are virtues in some remote planet. I cannot see, however, that this thought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than weeds are. There is another subject which is forced upon my notice. I like neighbors, and I like chickens; but I do not think they ought to be united near a garden. Neighbors' hens in your garden are an annoyance. Even if they did not scratch up the corn, and peck the strawberries, and eat the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see them straddling about in their jerkey, high-step- ping, speculative manner, picking inquisitively here and there. It is of no use to teU the neighbor that his hens eat your tomatoes: it makes no impression on him, for the tomatoes are not his. The best way is to casually remark to him that he has a fine lot of chickens, pretty well grown, and that you like spring chickens broiled. He will take them away at once. The neighbors' small children are also out of place in your garden in strawberry and currant time. I hope I appreciate the value of children. We should soon come to nothing without them, though the Shakers have the best gardens in the world. Witliout them the common school would languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in a garden. For they are not good to eat, and there is a law against making away with them. The law is not very well en- forced, it is true; for people do thin them out with constant dos- ing, paregoric and soothing-syrups, and scanty clothing. But I, for one, feel that it would not be right, aside from the law, to take the life, even of the smallest child, for the sake of a little fruit, more or less, in the garden. I may be wrong; but these are my sentiments, and I am not ashamed of them. When we come, as Bryant says in his " Iliad," to leave the circus of this life and join that innumerable caravan which moves, it will be some satis- faction to us that we have never, in the way of gardening, dis- posed of even the humblest child unnecessarily. My plan v/ould 4S4 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. be to put them into Sunday-schools more thoroughly, and to give the Sunday-schools an agricultural turn; teaching the children the sacredness of neighbors' vegetables. I think that our Sunday-schools do not sufficiently impress upon children the danger, from snakes and otherwise, of going into the neighbors' gardens. THE HODJA MAKES UP HIS MIND TO MARRY. BY S. S. COX. When the Hodja made up his mind to marry, his neighbors came to him and told him that if he married, his "wife would turn his house upside down." " Very well," says he, " I will take care of that." A few days after, he began building his house. Instead of beginning at the foundation, he surprises his neighbors by pre- paring the tiles for the roof. The neighbors come again and inquire of the Hodja : " What are you doing ? " " I am building my house," he responds. " But," they reply, " you cannot build a house, starting from the roof." " Yes," says the Hodja, " but did I not tell you I am going to marry ? " " What then?" say the anxious neighbors, fearing he had gone clean daft. '* What then ? Did you not tell me that if I married, my wife would turn my house upside down ? Now, I build it so that when she turns it upside down, it will be right-side up. If what you say to me be true, I advise you to follow my plan toward your wives. As they never agree with you, give them the oppo- site of what you v.ish, and you will always have your own will." The moral whereof is : tJiat often by indirection and tacking, we bring the ship into port. THE OLD SETTLER. a8 4^5 THE OLD SETTLER. His Reasons for Thinking there is Natural Gas in Deep Rock Gulley. by edward harold mott. ^DWARD HAROLD MOTT is a native of Milford, Pike Co., Pa., and is a printer by trade and journalist by profession. He is a contributor to Puck, TJie Judge, and other comic papers. He was born January 17, 1845. " I SEE by the papers, 'Squire," said the Old Settler, " that they're a finding signs o' coal ile an' nat'ral gas like sixty here an' thar in deestric's not so terrible fur from here, an' th't konsekently land they usety beg folks to come an' take offen their hands at any price at all is wuth a dollar now, jist for a peep over the stun wall at it. The minute a feller finds signs o' ile or nat'ral gas on his plantation he needn't lug home his supplies in a quart jug no more, but kin roll 'em m by the bar'l, fer signs o' them kind is wuth more an inch th'n a sartin-per-sure grass an' 'tater farm is wuth an acre." *' Guess yer huggin' the truth pootyclus fer wunst, Major," replied the 'Squire, " but th' hain't none o' them signs ez likely to strike anywhar in our bailiwick ez lightnin' is to kill a crow roostin' on the North Pole. Thuz one thing I've alluz wanted to see," continued the 'Squire, " but natur' has ben agin me, an' I hain't never seen it, an' that thing is the h'istin' of a balloon. Th' can't be no balloon h'isted nowhar, I'm told, 'nless thuz gas to h'ist it with. I s'pose if we'd ha' had gas here, a good many fellers with balloons 'd ha' kim 'round this way an' showed us a balloon raisin' ev'ry now an' then. Them must be lucky dees- tric's that's got gas, an' I'd like to hev somebody strike it 'round here some'rs, jist fer the sake o' havin' the chance to see a bal- loon h'istin' 'fore I turn my toes up. But that's 'bout es liable to happen ez it is fer me to go out an' find a silver dollar rollin' up hill, an' my name gouged m it." " Don't ye be so consarned sure o' that, 'Squire," said the Old Settler, mysteriously, and with a knowing shake of his head. '■'■ Tve been a thinkin' a leetle sence readin' 'bout them signs o' gas, b'gosh ! I hain't been only thinkin', but I've been a recol- 486 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. lectin*, an' the chances is th't me an' you'll see wonders yet afore we paddle over Jurdan. I'm agointer tell ye fer w'y, but I hadn't orter, 'Squire, an' if it wa'n't fer makin' ye shamed o' yer- self, an' showin' th't truth squashed in the mud is bound to git up agin if ye give her time, I wouldn't do it. Ye mowt remem- ber th't jist ten years ago this month I kim in from a leetle b'ar hunt. I didn't bring in no b'ar, but I fotched back an up - an' - up ac- count o' how I had shot one, an' how th'' were s u m p i n fearful an' queer an' araazin' in the p'formances o' that b'ar arter bein' shot. Mebby ye 'member me a tellin' ye that story, 'Squire, an' you a tellin' me right in my teeth th't ye know'd th't some o' yer friends had took to lyin', but th't ye didn't think any of 'em had it so bad ez that. But I hain't a hold- in' no gredge, an' now I'll tell ye sump- in' that'll s'prise ye. *' Ez I tol' ye at the time, 'Squire, I got the tip ten year ago this month, th't unless somebody went up to Steve Groner's hill place an' poured a pound or two o' lead inter a big b'ar th't had squatted on tha' farm, th't Steve wouldn't hev no live-stock left to pervide pork an' beef fer his winterin' over, even if he man- THE OLD SETTLER. 487 aged to keep hisself an' fani'ly theirselfs from linin' the b'ar's innards, I shouldered my gun an' went up to Steve's to hev some fun with brum, an' to save Steve's stock and resky him an' his folks from the rampagin' b'ar. " ' He's a rip-snorter,' Steve says to me, w'en I got than ' He don't think nuthin' o' luggin' off a cow,' he says, ' an' ye don't wanter hev yer weather eye shet w'en you an' him comes together,' he says. " ' B'ars,' I says to Steve, * b'ars is nuts fer me, an' the bigger an' sassier they be,' I says, < the more I inj'y 'em,' I says, an' with that I dim' inter the woods to show bruin _ th't th' wa'n't room enough here below fer me an' him both. 'Tain't necessary fer me to tell o' the half-dozen or more lively skrimmages me an' that b'ar had ez we follered an' chased one another round an' round them woods — how he'd hide ahind some big tree or stump, an' ez I went by, climb on to me with all four o' his feet an' yank an' bite an' claw an' dig meat an' clothes offen me till I slung him off an' made him skin away to save his bacon ; an' how I'd lay the same way fer him, an' w'en he come sneakin' 'long arter me agin, pitch arter him like a mad painter, an' swat an' pound an' choke an' rassel him till his tongue hung out, till I were sorry for him, an' let him git away inter the brush agin to recooperate fer the next round. 'Taint wuth w'ile fer me to say anything 'bout them little skrimmages 'cept the last un, an' that un wa'n't a skrimmage, but sumpin' that'd 'a' skeert some folks dead in their tracks. '' Arter havin' a half a dozen or so o' rassels with this big b'ar, jist fer fun, I made up my mind, ez 'twere gettin' late, an' ez Steve Groner's folks was mebby feelin' anxious to hear which was gointer run the farm, them or the b'ar, th't the next heat with bruin would be for keeps. I guess the ol' feller had made up his mind the same way, fer w'en I run agin him the las' time, he were riz up on his hind legs right on the edge o' Deep Rock Gulley, and were waitin' fer me with his jaws wide open. I unslung my gun, an* takin' aim at one o' the b'ar's fore paws, thought I'd wing him an' make him come away from the edge o' the gulley^'fore I tackled him. The ball hit the paw, an' the b'ar throw'd 'em both up. But he throw'd 'em up too fur, an' he fell over back'rds, an' went head foremost inter the gulley. Deep Rock Gulley ain't an inch less'n fifty foot from top to bot- 488 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. torn, an' the walls is ez steep as the side of a house. I went up to the edge an' looked over. Ther' were the b'ar layin' on his face at the bottom, whar them queer cracks is in the ground, an' he were a howlin' like a hurricane and kickin' like a mule. Ther' he laid, and he wa'n't able to raise up. Th' wa'n't no way o' get- tin' down to him, 'cept by tumblin' down ez he had; an' if ever anybody were poppin' mad, I were, ez I see my meat a layin' at s^_^^'— ■-. . , , the bottom o' that gulley, an' the crows a getherin' to hev a picnic with it. The more I kep' my eyes on that b'ar the mad- der I got, an' I were jist about to roll and tumble an' slide down the side o' that gulley ruther than go back home an' say th't I'd let the crows steal a b'ar away from me, w'en I see a funny- change comin' over the b'ar. He didn't howl so much, and his kicks wa'n't so vicious. Then his hind parts began to lift themse'fs up offen the ground in a cur'ous sort o' way, and swung an' bob- bed in the air. They kep' raisin' higher an' higher, till the b'ar were act'ally standin' on his head, an' swayin' to and fro ez if a wind v.'ere blowin' him an' he couldn't help it. The sight was so oncommon out o' the reg'lar way b'ars has o' actin' that it seemed skeery, an' I felt ez if I'd ruther be home^iggin' my 'taters. But I kep' on gazin' at the b'ar a circusin' at the bot- tom o' the gulley, and 't wa'n't long 'fore the hull big carcase begun to raise right up offen the ground an' come a-fioatin' up A RISE IN BEAR MEAT. THE OLD SETTLER. 489 •outen that gulley, fer all the world ez if 't wa'n't more'n a feather. The b'ar come up'ards tail foremost, an' I noticed th't he looked consid'able puffed out like, makin' him seem lik' a bar'l sailin' in the air. Ez the b'ar kim a-floatin' out o' the dep's, I could feel my eyes begin to bulge, an' my knees to shake like a jumpin' jack's. But I couldn't move no more'n a stun wall kin, an' thar I stood on the edge o' the gulley, starin' at the b'ar ez it sailed on up t'ords me. The b'ar were making a desper't effort to git itself back to its nat'ral p'sition on all fours, but th' wa'n't no use, an' up he sailed, tail foremost, an' looking ez if he were gointer bust the next minute, he were swelled out so. Ez the b'ar bobbed up and passed by me I could ha' reached out an' grabbed him by the paw, an' I think he wanted me to, the way he acted, but I couldn't ha' made a move to stop him, not if he'd ha' ben my gran'mother. The b'ar sailed on above me, an' th' were a look in his eyes th't I won't never fergit. It was a skeert look, an' a look that seemed to say th't it were all my fault, an' th't I'd be sorry fer it some time. The b'ar squirmed an' struggled agin comin' to setch an' onheerdon end, but up'ards he went, tail foremost, to'ards the clouds. " I stood thar par'lyzed w'ile the b'ar went up'ard. The crows that had been settlin' round in the trees, 'spectin' to hev a bully meal, went to flyin' an' scootin' around the onfortnit b'ar, an' yelled till I were durn nigh deef. It wa'n't until the b'ar had floated up nigh onto a hundred yards in the air, an' begun to look like a flyin' cub, that my senses kim back to me. Quick ez a flash I rammed a load inter my rifle, wrappin' the ball with a big piece o' dry linen, not havin' time to tear it to the right size. Then I took aim an' let her go. Fast ez that ball went, I could see that the linen round it had been sot on fire by the powder. The ball overtook the b'ar and bored a hole in his side. Then the funniest thing of all happened. A streak o' fire a yard long- shot out o' the b'ar's side where the bullet had gone in, an' ez long as that poor bewitched b'ar were in sight — fer o' course 1 thort at the time th't the b'ar were bewitched — I could see that streak o' fire sailin' along in the sky till it went out at last like a shootin' star. I never knowed w'at become o' the b'ar, an' the hull thing were a startlin' myst'ry to me, but I kim home, 'Squire, an' tcl' ye the story, jest ez I've tol' it to ye now, an' ye were so durn polite th't ye said I were a liar. But sence, I've 490 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. % been a thinkin' an' recoUectin'. 'Squire, I don't hold no gredge. The myst'ry's plain ez day, now. We don't want no better signs o' gas th'n that, do we, 'Squire ? " " Than what ? " said the 'Squire. " Than what! " exclaimed the Old Settler. "Than that bar, o' course! That's w'at ailed him. It's plain enough th't thuz nat'ral gas on the Groner place, an' th't it leaks outen the ground in Deep Rock Gul- ley. Wen that b'ar tum- bled to the bottom that day, he fell on his face. He were hurt so th't he couldn't get up. O' course the gas didn't shut itself off, but kep' on a leakin', an' shot up inter the b'ar's mouth and down his throat. The onfortnit b'ar couldn't help hisself, an' bimby he were filled with gas like a balloon, till he had to float, an' away he sailed, up an' up an' up. Wen I fired at the b'ar, ez he w-as floatin' to'ards the clouds, the linen on the bullet carried fire with it, and w'en the bullet tapped the b'ar's side the burnin' linen sot it on fire, showin' th't th' can't be no doubt 'bout it bein' gas th't the b'ar swallered in Deep Rock Gulley. So ye see, 'Squire, I wan't no liar, an' the chances is all in favor o' your seein' a balloon h'isted from gas right in yer own bailiwick afore ye turn up yer toes." The 'Squire gazed at the Old Settler in silent amazement for a minute or more. Then he threw up his hands and said: "Wal— I'll— be— darned! " A LONG SHOT. BOY THE DESTROYER. 491 BOY THE DESTROYER. BY C. D. WARNER. The power of a boy is, to me, something fearful. Consider what he can do ! You buy and set out A choice pear-tree; you enrich the earth for it, you train and trim it, and van- quish the borer, and watch its slow growth. At length it rewards your care by pro- ducing two or three pears, which you cut up and divide in the family, declaring the flavor of the bit you eat to be something extraordinary. The next year, the little tree blossoms full, and sets well ; and in the autumn has on it£ slender, drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, daily grow- ing more delicious in the sun. You show it to your friends, reading to them the French name, which you can never remember, on the label; and you take an hon- est pride in the successful fruit of long care. That night your pears shall be BOY THE DESTROYER. required of you by a boy! Along comes an irresponsible urchin, who has not been growing much longer than the tree, with not twenty-five cents' worth of clothing on him, and in five minutes takes off every pear, and retires into safe obscurity. In five minutes the remorseless boy has undone your work of years, and with the easy no?ichalance, I doubt not, of any agent of fate, in whose path nothing is sacred or safe. And it is not of much consequence. The boy goes on his way, 492 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. — to Congress, or to State-prison: in either place he will be accused of stealing, perhaps wrongfully. You learn, in time, that it is better to have had pears and lost them, than not to have had pears at all. You come to know that the least (and rarest) part of the pleasure of raising fruit is the vulgar eating it. You recall your delight in conversing with the nurseryman, and looking at his illustrated catalogues, where all the pears are drawn perfect in form, and of extra size, and at that exact moment between ripeness and decay which it is so impossible to hit in practice. Fruit cannot be raised on this earth to taste as you imagine those pears would taste. For years you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disenchanting reality. How you watch the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly forming bark, hovering about the healthy growing tree with your pruning- knife many a sunny morningi That is happiness. Then, if you know it, you are drinking the very wine of life; and when the sweet juices of the earth mount the limbs, and flow down the tender stem, ripening and reddening the pendent fruit, you feel that you somehow stand at the source of things, and have no unimportant share in the processes of Nature. Enter, at this moment, boy the destroyer, whose office is that of preserver as well; for, though he removes the fruit from your sight, it remains in your memory immortally ripe and desirable. The gardener needs all these consolations of a high philosophy. Man waz kreated a little lower than the angells, and he haz been a gitting a little lower ever since. JobK Billings. THE TYPE.WRITER. 493 THE TYPE-WRITER. by robert j. burdette. Cardinal — " Beneath the sliding rule of men entirely great The type-writer is greater than the sword." Oldgold — <' Who swored, my lord ? " Cardinal — " The man who received the type-writer ktter; The printers who set up the copy; Whole words spelled in the space of one small m, With all the letters piled on top of one another, Like to a Chinese sentence standing on its head. What sense is there in this ? — " Rgw ? GHops ffl dww d^" And yet I know it means "the horse fell dead." In all the lexicons we use there's no such word As " kbfitMa)I$n*[ ; " yet full well I know It stands in this man's note for " information;" I have so learned the tangled language of the thing. That all its jargon is writ plain for me; But solely do I fear that learning it, I have made a hopeless wreck of temperate speech, And lost my front-pew standing in the synagogue. See, all around this line of consonants Scarred with lost capitals, the proof-reader has drawn His awful circle with the pencil blue; Stand off: while on this correspondent's head I launch the cuss of our Composing Room. (The cuss.) Dog gone the billy be dog goned man of thumbs, The diddledy dag goned chalky fingered loon Ygum; 'gaul; od rabbit; jeeminy pelt! Gad zooks; odd beddikins; by Venus' glove; By Mars his gauntlet; by the river side; Sweet by and by, and bo oh, baby by — " (At this point the caitiff slowly withers away.) 494 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE AT UTICA. BY ARTEMUS WARD. In the Faul of 1856 I showed my show in Utiky, a trooly grate sitty in the State of New York. The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was loud in her prases. I day, as I was givin' a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks in my usual flowry stile, what was my skorn & disgust to see a big burly feller walk up to the cage containin my wax figgers of the Lord's Last Sirpper, and cease Judas Iscarrot by the feet and AN OUTRAGE. drag him out on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound him as hard as he cood. "What under the son are you abowt ?" cried I. Sez he, "What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here fur ? " & he hit the wax figger another tremenjis blow on the hed. Sez I, " You egrejus ass, that air's a wax figger — a representa- shun of the false 'Postle." Sez he, " That's all very well fur you to say, but I tell you, old man, that Judas Iscarrot can't show hisself in Utiky with impu- nerty by a darn site!" with which observashun he kaved in Judassis' hed. The young man belonged to i of the first famer- lies in Utiky. I sood him, and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in the 3d degree. AT NIAGARA. 495 r AT NIAGARA. BY W. D. HOWELLS. Our friends returned b}' the shore of the Canadian rapids, hav- ing traversed the island by a path through the heart of the woods, and now drew slowly near the Falls again. All parts of the pro- digious pageant have an eternal novelty, and they beheld the ever-varying effect of that constant sublimity with the sense of discoverers, or, rather, of people whose great fortune it is to see AT NIAGARA. the marvel in its beginning, and new from the creating Hand. The morning hour lent its sunny charm to this illusion, while in the cavernous precipices of the shores, dark with evergreens, a mystery as of primeval night seemed to linger. There was a wild fluttering of their nerves, a rapture with an under-consciousness of pain, the exaltation of peril and escape, when they came to the three little isles that extend from Goat Island, one beyond another, far into the furious channel. Three pretty suspension- bridges connect them now with the larger island, and under each of these flounders a huge rapid, and hurls itself away to mingie with the ruin of the fall. The Three Sisters are mere fragments of wilderness, clumps of vine-tangled woods, planted upon masses 496 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. of rock; but they are part of the fascination of Niagara which no one resists; nor could Isabel have been persuaded from exploring them. It wants no courage to do this, but merely submission to the local sorcery ; and the adventurer has no other reward than the consciousness of having been where but a few years before no human being had perhaps set foot. She crossed from bridge to bridge with a quaking heart, and at last stood upon the outer- most isle, whence, through the screen of vines and boughs, she gave fearful glances at the heaving and tossing flood beyond, from every wave of which at every instant she rescued herself with a desperate struggle. The exertion told heavily upon her strength unawares, and she suddenly made Basil another revela- tion of character. Without the slightest warning she sank down at the root of ^ tree, and said, with serious composure, that she could never go back on those bridges; they were not safe. He stared at her cowering form in blank amaze, and put his hands in his pockets. Then it occurred to his dull masculine sense that it must be a joke; and he said, "Well, I'll have you taken off in a boat." " O do, Basil, do have me taken off in a boat !" implored Isabel. "You see yourself the bridges are not safe. Do get a boat !" " Or a balloon," he suggested, humoring the pleasantry. Isabel burst into tears; and nov/ he went on his knees at her side, and took her hands in his. " Isabel ! Isabel ! Are you crazy ? " he cried, as if he meant to go mad himself. She moaned and shuddered in reply; he said, to mend matters, that it was a jest, about the boat; and he was driven to despair when Isabel repeated, " I never can go back by the bridges, never !" " But what do you propose to do ? " " I don't know; I don't know ! " He would try sarcasm. " Do you intend to set up a hermit- age here, ar^d have your meals sent out from the hotel ? It's a charming spot, and visited pretty constantly; but it's small, even for a hermitage." Isabel moaned again, with her hands still on her eyes, and won- dered that he was not ashamed to make fun of her. He would try kindness. " Perhaps, darling, you'll let me carry you ashore ? " " No; that will bring double the weight on the bridge at once.** " Couldn't you shut your eyes, and let me lead you?" 497 " Why, it isn't the sight of the rapids," she said, looking up fiercely. " The bridges are not safe. I'm not a child, Basil ! O, what shall we do ? " " I don't know," said Basil, gloomily. " It's an exigency for which I wasn't prepared." Then he silently gave himself to the Evil One, for having probably overwrought Isabel's nerves by repeating- that poem about Avery, and by the ensuing talk about Niagara which she had seemed to enjoy so much. He asked her if that was it; and she answered, "O no, it's nothing but the bridges." He proved to her that the bridges, upon all known principles, were perfectly safe, and that they could not give way. She shook her head, but made no answer, a^d he lost his patience. " Isabel," he cried, " I'm ashamed of you ! " " Don't say anything you'll be sorry for afterwards, Basil," she replied, v.'ith the forbearance of those who have reason and justice on their side. The rapids beat and shouted round their little prison-isle, each billow leaping as if possessed by a separate demon. The absurd horror of the situation overwhelmed him. He dared not attempt to carry her ashore, for she might spring from his grasp into the flood. He could not leave her to call for help: and what if nobody came till she lost her mind from terror ! Or, what if somebody should come and find them in that ridiculous affliction ! Somebody was comingl " Isabel ! " he shouted in her ear, "here come those people we saw in the parlor last night." Isabel dashed her veil over her face, clutched Basil's with her icy hand, rose, drew her arm convulsively through his, and walked ashore without a word. In a sheltered nook they sat down, and she quickly " repaired her drooping head and tricked her beams " again. He could see her tearfully smiling through her veil. " My dear," he said, " I don't ask an explanation of your fright, for I don't suppose you could give it. But should you mind telling me why those people were so sovereign against it ? " "Why, dearest! Don't you understand ? That Mrs. Richard — whoever she is — is so much like mc!''' She looked at him as if she had made the most satisfying statement, and he thought he had better not ask further then, but wait in hope that the meaning would come to him. 498 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. A NEW SYSTEM OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. BY JOHN PHCENIX. I HAVE often thought that the adjectives of the English lan- guage were not sufficiently definite for the purposes of description. They have but three degrees of comparison — a very insufficient number, certamly, when we consider that they are to be applied to a thousand objects, which, though of the same general class or quality, differ from each other by a thousand different shades or degrees of the same peculiarity. Thus, though there are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, all of which must, from the nature of things, differ from each other in the matter of cli- mate— we have but half a dozen expressions to convey to one another our ideas of this inequality. We say — "It is a fine day;" "It is a very fine day;" "It is the _^nesf day we have seen; " or, " It is an unpleasant day; " " A very unpleasant day;" " The ;;wj/ unpleasant day we ever saw." But it is plain that none of these expressions give an exacf idea of the nature of the day, and the two superlative expressions are generally untrue. I once heard a gentleman remark, on a rainy, snowy, windy and (in the ordinary English language) indescribable day, that it was " most preposterous weather." He came nearer to giving a cor- rect idea of it than he could have done by any ordinary mode of expression; but his description was not sufficiently definite. Again — we say of a lady — " She is beautiful; " " She is very beautiful," or " She is /,?;/,?^//v beautiful " — descriptions which, to one who never saw her, are no descriptions at all, for among thousands of women he has seen, probably no two are equally beautiful; and as to a perfectly beautiful woman, he knows that no such being was ever created — unless by G. P. R. James, for one of the two horsemen to fall in love with, and marry at the end of the second volume. If I meet Smith in the street, and ask him — as I am pretty sure to do — " How he does ? " he infallibly replies — " Tolerable, thank you " — which gives me no exact idea of Smith's health — for he has made the same reply to me on a hundred different occasions — on every one of which there must have been some A NEW SYSTEM OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 499 slight shade of difference in his physical economy, and, of course, a corresponding change in his feelings. To a man of a mathematical turn of mind — to a student and lover of the exact sciences — these inaccuracies of expression, this inability to understand exactly how things are, must be a constant source of annoyance; and to one who, like myself, unites this turn FLATHEADED INDIAN. of mind to an ardent love of truth, for its own sake, the reflec- tion that the English language does not enable us to speak the truth with exactness, is peculiarly painful. For this reason I have, with some trouble, made myself thoroughly acquainted with every ancient and modern language, in the hope that I might find some one of them that would enable me to express precisely my ideas; but the same insufficiency of adjectives exists in all 500 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. except that of the Flathead Indians of J'uget Sound, which con- sists of but forty-six words, mostly nouns; but to the constant use of which exists the objection that nobody but that tribe can understand it. And as their literary and scientific advancement is not such as to make a residence among them, for a man of my disposition, desirable, I have abandoned the use of their language in the belief that for me it is hyas. ciilfiis., or as the Spaniard hath it, no me vale nada. Despairing, therefore, of making new discoveries in foreign languages, I have set myself seriously to work to reform our own; and have, I think, made an important discovery, which, when developed into a system and universally adopted, will give a pre- cision of expression, and a consequent clearness of idea, that will leave little to be desired, and will, I modestly hope, immor- talize my humble name as the promulgator of the truth and the benefactor of the human race. Before entering upon my system I will give you an account of its discovery, which, perhaps, I might with more modesty term an adaptation and enlargement of the idea of another, which will surprise you by its simplicity, and, like the method of standing eggs on end, of Columbus, the inventions of printing, gunpowder and the mariner's compass, prove another exemplification of the truth of Hannah More's beautifully expressed sentiment: " Large streams from little fountains flow, Large aches from little toe-corns grow." During the past week my attention was attracted by a large placard embellishing the corners of our streets, headed in mighty capitals, with the word "Phrenology," and illustrated by a map of a man's head, closely shaven, and laid off in lots, duly num- bered from one to forty-seven. Beneath this edifying illustration appeared a legend, informing the inhabitants of San Diego and vicinity that Professor Dodge had arrived, and taken rooms (which was inaccurate, as he had but one room) at the Gyas- cutus House, where he would be happy to examine and furnish them with a chart of their heads, showing the moral and intel- lectual endowments, at the low price of three dollars each. Always gratified with an opportunity of spending my money and making s>cientific researches, I immediately had my hair cut A NEW SYSTEM OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 501 and carefully combed, and hastened to present myself and mv head to the Professor's notice. I found him a tall and thin Pro- fessor, v.\ a suit of rusty, not to say seedy, black, with a closely buttoned vest, and no perceptible shirt-collar or wristbands. His nose was red, his spectacles were blue, and he wore a brown wig, beneath which, as I subsequently ascertained, his bald head was laid off in lots, marked and numbered with Indian ink, after the manner of the diagram upon his advertisement. Upon a small table lay many little books with yellow covers, several of the placards, pen and ink, a pair of iron callipers with brass knobs, and six dollars in silver. Having explained the object . of my visit, and increased the pile of silver by six half-dollars from my pocket— whereat he smiled, and I observed he wore false teeth (scientific men always do; they love to encourage art) — the Pro- fessor placed me in a chair, and rapidly manipulating my head, after the manner of a shaju pooh (I am not certain as to the orthogra- phy of this expression), said that my temperament was '• lym- phatic, nervous, bilious." I remarked that "I thought myself dyspeptic," but he made no reply. Then seizing on the callipers, l>e embraced with them my head in various places, and made notes upon a small card that lay near him on the table. He then stated that my " hair was getting very thin on the top," placed in my hand one of the yellow-covered books, which I found to be an almanac containing anecdotes about the virtues of Dodge's Hair Invigorator, and recommending it to my perusal, he remarked that he was agent for the sale of this wonderful fluid, and urged me to purchase a bottle — price two dollars. Stating my willingness to do so, the Professor produced it from a hair trunk that stood in a corner of the room, which he stated, by the way, was originally an ordinary pine box, on which the hair had grown since " the Invigorator" had been placed in it — (a singu- lar fact) and recommended me to be cautious in wearing gloves while rubbing it upon my head, as unhappy accidents had occur- red— the hair growing freely from the ends of the lingers, if used with the bare hand. He then seated himself at the table, and rapidly filling up what appeared to me a blank certificate, he soon handed over the following singular document. Phrenological Chart of the head of M. John Phcenix, by Flat- broke B. Dodge, Professor of Phrenology, and inventor and proprietor of 502 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Dodge's celelirated Hair Invigorator, Stimulator of the Conscience, and Arouset of the Mental Faeulties : Temperament — Lymphatic, Nervous, Bilious. Size of Head, ii. Amativeness, ll^. Caution, 3. Combativeness, 2^. Credulity, i Causality, 12. Conscientiousness, 12. Destructiveness, 9. Hope, 10. Imitation, 11 Self-Estccm, y^. Benevolence, 12. Mirth, I. Language, 12. Firmness, 2. Veneration, 12. Philoprogenitiveness, o. Having gazed on this for a few moments in mute astonishment — during which the Professor took a glass of brandy and water, and afterwards a mouthful of tobacco — I turned to him and requested an explanation. "Why," said he, "it's very simple ; the number 12 is the maximum, i the minimum; for instance, you are as benev- olent as a man can be — there- fore I mark you. Benevolence, 12. You have little or no self-esteem — hence I place you, Self-esteem, Yz. You've scarcely any credulity — don't you see ?" / did see ! This was my discovery. I saw at a flasi^ how the English language wa^ susceptible of improvement, and, fired with the glorious idea, I rushed from the room and the house. Heedless of the Professor's request that I would buy more of his Invig- orator ; heedless of his alarmed cry that I would pay for the bottle I'd got ; heedless that I tripped on the last step of the Gyascutus House, and smashed there the precious fluid (the step has now a growth of four inches of hair on it, and the people use PHRENOLOGY. A NEW SYSTEM OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 503 it as a door- mat) — I rushed home, and never grew cahn till, with pen, ink and paper before me, I commenced the development of my system. This system — shall I say this great system ? — is exceedingly simple, and easily explained in a few words. In the first place, ^'■figures won t lie'' Let us, then, represent by the number 100 the maximum, the ne plus ultra, of every human quality : grace, beauty, courage, strength, wisdom, learning — everything. Let perfection, I say, be represented by 100, and an absolute mini- mum of all qualities by the number i. Then, by applying the numbers between, to the adjectives used in conversation, we shall be able to arrive at a very close approximation to the idea we wish to convey ; in other words, v/e shall be enabled to speak the truth. Glorious, soul-inspiring idea ! For instance, the most ordinary question asked of you is, " How do you do ?" To this, instead of replying, " Pretty well," " Very well," " Quite well," or the like absurdities — after running through your mind that perfection of health is 100; no health at all, i — you say, with a graceful bow, "Thank you, I'm 52 to-day ;" or, feeling poorly, " I'm 13, I'm obliged to you;" or, '' I'm 68," or " 75," or <' 87^^," as the case may be ! Do you see how very close, in this way, you may approximate to the truth, and how clearly your questioner will understand what he so anxiously wishes to arrive at — your exact state of health ? Let this system be adopted into our elements of grammar, our conversation, our literature, and we become at once an exact, pre- cise, mathematical, truth-telling people. It will apply to every- thing but politics ; there, truth being of no account, the system is useless. But in literature, how admirable ! Take an example : As a 19 young and 76 beautiful lady was 52 gaily tripping down the sidewalk of our 84 frequented street, she accidentally came in contact — 100 (this shows that she came in close contact) ■with a 73 fat but 87 good-humored-looking gentleman, who was 93 (i. e., intently) gazing into the window of a toy-shop. Grace- fully 56 extricating herself, she received the excuses of the 96 embarrassed Falstaff with a 68 bland smile, and continued on her way. But hardly — 7 — had she reached the corner of the block, ere she was overtaken by a 24 young man, 32 poorly dressed, but of an 85 expression of countenance ; 91 hastily touching her ^154 beautifully rounded arm, he said, to her 67 surprise: ,504 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " Madam, at the window of the toy-shop yonder you dropped this bracelet, which I had the 71 good fortune to observe, and now have the 94 happiness to hand to you." (Of course, the expression " 94 happiness " is merely the poor man's polite hyper- bole.) Blushing with 76 modesty, the lovely (76, as before, of course) lady took the bracelet — which was a 24 magnificent diamond clasp (24 magnificent, playfully sarcastic; it was probably not oviO, of Tucker's) — from the young man's hand, and 84 hesitatingly drew from her beautifully 38 embroidered reticule a 67 port- monnaie. The young man noticed the action, and 73 proudly drawing back, added : " Do not thank me ; the pleasure of gazing for an instant at those 100 eyes (perhaps too exaggerated a compliment) has already more than compensated me for any trouble that I might have had." She thanked him, however, and with a 67 deep blush and a 48 pensive air, turned from him, and pursued with a 2>Z slow step her promenade. Of course, you see that this is but the commencement of a pretty little tale, which I might throw off, if I had a mind to, showing, in two volumes, or forty-eight chapters of thrilling inter- est, how the young man sought the girl's acquaintance, how the interest first excited deepened into love, how they suffered much from the opposition of parents (her parents, of course), and how, after much trouble, annoyance, and many perilous adventures, they were finally married— their happiness, of course, being repre- sented by 100. But I trust that I have said enough to recom- mend my system to the good and truthful of the literary world ; and besides, just at present I have something of more immediate importance to attend to. You would hardly believe it, but that everlasting (100) scamp of a Professor has brought a suit against me for stealing a bottle of his disgusting Invigorator; and as the suit comes off before a Justice of the Peace whose only principle of law is to find guilty and fine any accused person who he thinks has any money (because if he doesn't he has to take his costs in County Scrip), it behooves me to " take time by the fore-lock." So, for the pres- ent, adieu. Should my system succeed to the extent of my hopes and expectations, I shall publish my new grammar early in the IN SIS'S INTEREST. 505 enr.uing month, with suitable dedication and preface; and should you, with your well-known liberality, publish my prospectus, and give me a handsome literary notice, I shall be pleased to furnish a presentation copy to each of the little Pioneer children. P. S. — I regret to add, that having just read this article to Mrs. Phoenix, and asked her opinion thereon, she replied, that " if a first-rate magazine article were represented by 100, she should judge this to be about 13 ; or if the quintessence of stu- pidity were 100, she should take this to be in the neighborhood of 96." This, as a criticism, is perhaps a little discouraging, but as an exemplification of the merits of my system it is exceedingly flattering. How could she, I should like to 'know, in ordinary language, have given so exact duad truthful an idea — how expressed so forcibly her opinion (which, of course, differs from mine) on the subject? As Dr. Samuel Johnson learnedly remarked to James Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck, on a certain occasion : *' Sir, the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof." IN SIS'S INTEREST. Omaha Man — " You naughty boy, Dick, don't you know better than to ask people how much money they have ? I hope you will excuse the child, Mr. Nicefellow" — "Of course, of course! The little fellow didn't know what he was talking about." Little Dick— "Yes I did, too. Sis said she wished she knew, and I wanted to tell her." — Newspaper. 5o5 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE; I OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY." A Logical Story, BY DR. O. W. HOLMES. Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay. That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay, rii tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits — Have you ever heard of that, I say ? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. Georgius Secundus was then alive — Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always somewhere a weakest spot — In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill. In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill. In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace — lurking still. Find it somewhere you must and will — Above or below, or within or without — And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't ivear out. But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an " I dew vum," or an " I teWjcou ") THE " ONE-HOSS SHAY:' 507 He would build one shay to beat the taown, 'n' the keounty, 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it ceuldii break daown: — " Fur," said the Deacon, " 't's mighty plain Thut the v;eakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'n' the way t* fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest," So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak. That couldn't be split nor bent nOr broke — That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the " Settler's ellum " — Last of its timber — they couldn't sell 'em. Never an axe had seen their chips. And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too. Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he " put her through." — "There ! " said the Deacon, " naow she'll dew ! " Do ! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder and nothing less ! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and Deaconess dropped away, Children and grandchildren — where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day ! Eighteen hundred — it came and found The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. Co8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Eighteen hundred increased by ten — " Hahnsum kerridge " they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came — Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and fifty-five. Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.— You 're welcome.— No extra charge.) First of November — the Earthquake-day — There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be— for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start. For thie wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub encore. And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt In an another hour it will be worn out ! First of November, 'Fifty-five ! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way ! Here comes the wonderful owe-hoss shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay, '' Huddup ! " said the parson. — Off went they. The parson was working his Sunday's text — Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed • At what the— Moses — was coming next. THE "OXE-HOSS SHAY." 509 THE END OF THE SHAY. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the mcet'n'-house on the hill. — First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill — And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half past nine by the-neet'n'-house clock — Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! 5IO MARir TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. — What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around ? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground ! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once — All at once, and nothing first — Just as bubbles do when they burst. End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say. "NOT LIKE IN LIKE, BUT LIKE IN DIFFERENCE." BY R. J. BURDETTE. " Darling," he said, lovingly, as no other man in the world could say it, " I don't like you to destroy your own beautiful complexion with paint and powder. And if you paint your face, I will paint mine." "Why?" she asked, with pouting lips. *' Because," he said, more tenderly than ever, *' you are mine. We belong to each other, and what is good for one, is good for the other. We love each other, and must be like each other, and if you put paint on your cheeks this evening, I will paint mine before we go to the theatre." "My own true love," she said, kissing him, " you are right ; we must be like each other. I will not paint nor powder my face. And you just sit here by the fire a couple of minutes, and I will run around to Dutch Jake's and spice my breath up with a dish of beer and a Chinese cigarette, and we will be ready to go to the theatre like a pair of engaged Siamese twins with American breaths." And William thought it all over, and told her to go and put on all the feminine fol-de-rols and crinkles she could find in the illustrated adver- tisements. LOST IN THE SNO W. en LOST IN THE SNOW. BY MARK TWAIN. "We mounted and started. The snow lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a road perceptible, and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see more than a hun- dred yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by the mountain ranges. The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his instinct was as sensitive as any compass, and that he could ''strike a bee-line" for Carson City and never diverge from it. He said that if he v/ere to straggle a single point out of the true line, his instinct would assail him like an outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into his wake happy and content. For half an hour we poked along warily enough, but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorff shouted proudly : " I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys! Here we are, right in somebody's tracks that will hunt the way for us without any trouble. Let's hurry up and join company with the party." So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow, and l)efore long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors, for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried along, and at the end of an hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher — but what surprised us was, that the number of travelers in advance of us seemed to steadily increase. We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at such a time and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that it must be a company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution and jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now. But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment — Ballou said they had already increased to five hun- dred! Presently he stopped his horse and said: "Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been cir- cussing round and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blind desert! By George, this is perfectly hydraulic!" Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollen- 5^^ MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. dorff all manner of hard names — said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he *' did not know as much as a logarythm! " We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff and his "mental compass" were in disgrace from that mctoent. After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again, with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and took his pedestrian way Car- son-wards, singing his same tiresome song about his " sister and his brother" and "the child in the grave with its mother," and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white oblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered and lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep, and Sleep betrayed him to Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became exhausted and dropped. Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream, and started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. We hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver's bump of locality. But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. We were soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep ruts the wheels made for a guide. By this time it was three in the afternoon, and conse- quently it was not very long before night came — and not with a lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a cellar door, as is its habit in that country. The snow-fall was still as thick as ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us; but all about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern the smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling and slowly disappearing wheel- tracks. Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height — three or four feet; they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert; each of them was a mere snow-mound, now; in atiy direction that you proceeded (the same as in a well-laid-out orchard) you would find yourself moving down a distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds on either side of it — an avenue the customary width of a road, nice and level LOST IN THE SNOW. r i :» in its breadth, and rising at the sides in the most natural way, by reason of the mounds. But we had not thought of this. Then imagme the chilly thrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in the night, that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long ago been buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere sage-brush avenue, miles away from the road and diverging further and further away from it all the time. Having a cake of ice slipped down one's back is placid comfort compared to it. There was a sudden leap and stir of blood that had been asleep for an hour, and as sudden a rousing of all the drowsing activities in our minds and bodies. We were alive and awake at once — and shaking and quaking with conster- nation, too. There was an instant halting and dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning of the road-bed. Useless, of course; for if a faint depression could not be discerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainly could not with one's nose nearly against it. We seemed to be in a road, but that v/as no proof. We tested this by walking off in various directions — the regular snow-mounds and the regular avenues between them convinced each m.an that he had found the true road, and that the others had found only false ones. Plainly, the situa- tion was desperate. We were cold and stiff, and the horses were tired. We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning. This was wise, because if we were wandering from the right road, and the snow-storm continued another day, our case would be the next thing to hopeless if we kept on. All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us, now, and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and so we tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that it could be done, and without any trouble — because every man in the party had read about it in books many a time, and had naturally come to believe it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted and believed that otJicr common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together. We huddled together on our knees in the deep snov»', and the horses put their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while the featherv flakes eddied down and turned as mio a group of white statuary, we proceeded with the moment- 514 MARK TIVAIX'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. ous experiment. We broke twigs from a sage-bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of our bodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready, and then, while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious sus- pense, Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger, and blew the pile clear out of the county! It was the flattest failure that ever was. This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror — the horses were gone! I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my absorbing anxiety over the pistol experiment I had un- consciously dropped them, and the released animals had walked EXPERIMENTING. off in the storm. It was useless to try to follow them, fo) tneir footfalls could make no sound, and one could pass with'tn two yards of the creatures and never see them. We gave them up without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books that said horses would stay by their masters for protection and companionship in a distressful time like ours. We were miserable enough, before; we felt stil" more forlorn now. Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them, and once more the Prussian bhot them into annihilation. Plainly, to light a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience, and the middle of a desert at LOST IN THE SNOW. 515 midnight in a snow-storm was not a good place or time for the acquiring of the accomplishment. We gave it up and tried the other. Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafing them together. At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled, and so were the sticks. We bitterly execrated the Indians, the hunters, and the books that had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondered dismally what was next to be done. At this critical moment Mr. Ballou fished out four matches from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket. To have found four gold bars would have seemed poor and cheap good luck compared to this. One cannot think how good a match looks under such circum- stances— or how lovable and precious, and sacredly beautiful to the eye. This time we gathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Ballou prepared to light the first match, there was an amount of interest centred upon him that pages of writing could not describe. The match burnt hopefully a moment, and then went out. It could not have carried more regret with it if it had been a human life. The next match simply flashed and died. The wind puffed the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge of success. We gathered together closer than ever, and developed a solicitude that was rapt and painful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our last hope on his leg. It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a robust flame. Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bent gradually down, and every heart went with him — everybody, too, for that matter — and blood and breath stood still. The flame touched the sticks at last, took gradual hold upon them — hesitated— took a stronger hold — hesitated again— held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then gave a sort of human gasp and went out. Nobody said a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence; even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise than the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversation began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the conviction that this was our last night with the living. I had so hoped that I was the only one who felt so ! When the others calmly acknov^^ledged their conviction, it sounded like the summons itself. Ollendorff said: " Brothers, let us die together. And let us go without one hard feeling towards each other. Let us forget and forgive by- gones. I know that you have felt hard towards me for turning- c 1 6 M4RK TWAIN ' S LIBRA R V OF HUMOR. over the canoe, and for knowing too much, and leading you round and round in the snow — but I meant well; forgive me! I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings against Mr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a thing I do not know what, but no doubt a thing considered dis- graceful and unbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind, and has hurt me a great deal — but let it go; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all my heart, and — " Poor Ollendorff broke down, and the tears came. He was not alone, for I was crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou. Ollendorff got his voice again, and forgave me for things I had done and said. Then he got out his bottle of whisky, and said that whether he lived or died he would never touch another drop. He said he had given up all hope of life, and although ill-prepared, was ready to submit humbly to his fate; that he wished he could be spared a little longer, not for any selfish reason, but to make a thorough reform in his character, and by devoting himself to helping the poor, nursing the sick, and pleading with the people to guard themselves against the evils of intemperance, make his life a beneficent example to the young, and lay it down at last with the precious reflection that it had not been lived in vain. He ended by saying that his reform should begin at this moment, even here in the presence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed wherein to prosecute it to men's help and benefit — and with that he threw away the bottle of whisky. Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he could not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards that had solaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable. He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling with cards in any way was immoral and mjurious, and no man could be wholly pure and blemishless Avithout eschewing them. '' x\nd therefore," continued he, " in doing this act, I already feel more in sympathy with that spiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform." These rolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could have done, and the old man sobbed with a mournfulness not tmmingled with satisfaction. My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my com- rades, and I know that the feelings that prompted them v/ere heartfelt and sincere. We were all sincere, and all deeply moved LOST IN THE SNOW. c t t and earnest, for we were in the presence of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doing it felt that at last I was free of a hated-vice, and one that had ridden me like a tyrant all my days. While I yet talked, the thought of the good I might have done in the world, and the still greater good I might iioiv do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide me, if I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me, and the tears came again. We put our arms about each other's necks and awaited the warning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing. It came stealing over us presently, and then- we bade each other a last farewell. A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding senses, while the snow-flakes wove a winding- sheet about my conquered body. Oblivion came. The battle of life was done. I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed an age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by- degrees, and then came a gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. I shuddered. The thought flitted through my brain, " This is death — this is the hereafter." Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said with bitterness: " Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind ?" It was Ballou — at least it was a towzled snow image in a sit- ting posture, with Ballou's voice. I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from, us, were the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still saddled and bridled horses ! An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word. We really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not " do the subject justice;" the whole situation was so painfully ridiculous and humiliating that words were tame, and we did not know where to commence, anyhow. The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well- nigh dissipated, indeed. We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and sullen; and then, euigry at each other, angry at our- selves, angry at everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and in unsociable single file plowed our 5 I S MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. way to the horses, unsaddled them, and sought shelter in the station. I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd adventure. It occurred almost e.-actly as I have stated it. We actually went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at mid- night, in a storm, forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn. For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust. The mystery was gone now, and it wac plain enough why the horses had deserted us. Without a doubt, they were under that shed a quarter of a minute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed all our confessions and lamentations. After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon came back. The world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever. Presently an uneasiness came over me — grew upon me — assailed me without ceasing. Alas, my regeneration was not complete — I wanted to smoke! I resisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak. I wandered away alone, and wrestled with myself an hour. I recalled my promise of reform, and preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively. But it was all in vain. I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-drifts hunting for my pipe. I discovered it after a con- siderable search, and crept away to hide myself and enjoy it. I remained behind the barn a good while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truer comrades should catch me in my degradation. At last I lit the pipe, and no human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then. I was ashamed of being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I felt that perhaps the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and so I turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorff turned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat unconscious Ballou deep in a game of "soli- taire " with the old greasy cards! Never take the Bull bi the horns, Young Man, but take him bi the tail, then yu kan let go when yu want to. Yure warm friend. Josh Billings. UNCLE JOSHUA DOWNING IN BOSTON. rjQ UNCLE JOSHUA DOWNING IN BOSTON. Letter from Joshua Downing, in Boston, to his Nephew, Jack Downing, in Portland. BY seea smith. Dear Nephew — I guess you won't be a little" struck up when you find out that I'm in Boston — but I had best begin at the beginning, and then I shall get thro' quicker. After seeing your letter to Ephraim, as I said be.ore, I con- cluded it wouldn't be a bad scheme to tackle up and take a load of turkies, some apple-sauce, and other notions that the neigh- bors wanted to get to market, and as your uncle Nat would be in Boston with the ax-handles, we all thought best to try our luck there. Nothing happened worth mentioning on the road, nor till next morning, after I got here and put up in Elm Street. I then got off my watch pretty curiously, as you shall be informed. I was down in the bar-room, and tho't it well enough to look pretty considerable smart, and now and then compared my watch with the clock in the bar, and found it as near right as ever it was — when a feller stept up to me and ask'd how I'd trade ? and says I. for what ? and says he, for your watch — and says I, any way that will be a fair shake — upon that says he, I'll give you my watch and five dollars. Says I, it's done i He gave me the five dollars, and I gave him my watch. Now, says I, give me your watch — and, says he, with a loud laugh, I ha'n't got none — and that kind a turn'd the laugh on me. Thinks I, let them laugh that lose. Soon as the laugh was over, the feller thought he'd try the watch to his ear — why, says he, it don't go — no, says I, not without it's carried — then I began to laugh — he tried to open it, and couldn't start it a hair, and broke his thumb-nail into the bargain. Won't she open ? says he. Not's I know on, says I — and then the laugh seemed to take another turn. Don't you think I got off the old Brittania pretty well, consid- rin' ? And then I thought I'd go and see about my load of tur- kies and other notions. I expected to have gone all over town to sell my load, but Mr. Doolittle told me if I'd go down to the new market, I should find folks enough to buy all I had at once. e,20 MARK TWAIN' ^ LIBRARY OF HUMOR. So down I goes, and a likely kind of a feller, with an eye like a hawk and quick as a steel-trap for a trade (they called him a 4th staller), came up to the wagon, and before you could say Jack Robinson, we struck a bargain for the whole cargo — and come to ^veigh and reckon up, I found I should get as much as \os. 6d. more than any of us calculated before I left home, and had the apple-sauce left, besides. So I thought I'd jist see how this 4th staller worked his card, to be able to give us so good a price for the turkies, and I went inside the market-house, and a grander sight I never expect to see ? But it was the 3d staller instead of the 4th had my turkies all sorted and hung up, and looking so much better that I hardly should known 'em. Pretty soon, a gen- tleman asked the 3d staller what he asked for turkies ? Why, says he, if you want something better than you ever saw before, there's some 't was killed last night, purpose for you. You may take 'em at gd, being it's you. I'll give you 12 cents, said the gentleman, as I've got some of the General Court to dine with me, and must treat well. I sha'n't stand for half a cent with an old customer, says he. And so they traded; and in about the space of half an hour or more, all my turkies went into baskets at that rate. The 4th staller gave me 6d. a pound, and I began to think I'd been a little too much in a hurry for trade — but's no use to cry for spilt milk. Then I went up to the State House, to see what was going on there; but I thoug'it I'd get off my apple-sauce on my way — and seeing a sign of old clothes bar- tered, I stepped in and made a trade, and got a whole suic of superfine black broadcloth from top to toe, for a firkin of apple- sauce (which didn't cost much, I guess, at home). Accordingly, I rigged myself up in the new suit, and you'd hardly known me. I didn't like the set of the shoulders, they were so dreadful puckery; but the man said that was all right. I guess he'll find the apple-sauce full as puckery when he gets down into it — but that's between ourselves. Well, when I got up to the State House I found them to work at the rail road — busy enough, I can tell you — they got a part of it made already. I found most all the folks kept their hats on, except the man who \vas talking out loud and the man he was talking to — all the rest seemed to be busy about their own consarns. As I didn't see anybody to talk to, I kept my hat on and took a seat, and look'd round to see what was going on. I hadn't been setting long UXCLE JOSHUA DOWNING IN BOSTON. 521 before I saw a slick-headed, sharp-eyed little man, who seemed to have the principal management of the folks, looking at me pretty sharp, as much as to say, who are you ? but I said nothing, and looked t'other way — at last he touched me on the shoulder — I thought he was feeling of the puckers. Are you a mem- ber ? says he — sartin, says I — how long have you taken your seat ? says he — about ten minutes, says I, Are you qualified ? says he — I guess not, says I. And {hen he left me. I didn't know exactly what this old gentleman was after — but soon he returned, and said it was proper for me to be qualified before I took a seat, and I must go before the governor ! By Jing ! I never felt so before in all my born days. As good luck would have it, he was beckoned to come to a man at the desk, and as soon as his back was turned, I give him the slip. Jest as I was going off, the gentleman who bought my turkies of the 4th staller took hold of my arm, and I was afraid at first he was going to carry me to the governor — but he began to talk as sociable as if we had been old acquaintances. How long have you been in the house, Mr. Smith, says he. My name is Downing, says I. I beg your pardon, says he — I mean Downing. It's no offense, says I, I haven't been here long. Then, says he, in a very pleasant way, a few of your brother members are to take pot-luck with me to-d jy, and I should be happy to have you join them. What's pot- luck ? says I. O, a family dinner, says he — no ceremony. I thought by this time I was well qualified for that without going to the Gov- ernor. So, says I, yes, and thank ye, too. How long before you'll want me ? says I. At 3 o'clock, says he, and gave me a piece of paste board with his name on it, and the name of the street, and the number of his house, and said that would show me the way. Well, says I, I don't know of nothing that will keep me awa)\ And then we parted. I took a considerable lik- ing to him. ' After strolling round, and seeing a great many things about the State House and the marble immage of Gin. Washington, stand- ing on a stump in the Porch, I went out into the street they call Bacon street ; and my stars ! what swarms of women folks I saw all drcst up as if they were going to meeting. You can tell Cou- sin Polly Sandburn, who you know is no slimster, that she needn't take on so about beirrg genteel in her shapes — for the genteelest ladies here beat her as to size all hollow. I don't believe one of 522 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. 'em could get into our fore dore — and as for their arms — I shouldn't want better measure for a bushel of meal than one of their sleeves could hold. I sha'n't shell out the bushel of corn you say I've lost on Speaker Ruggles at that rate. But this puts me in mind of the dinner which Mr. wants I should help the Gineral Court eat. So I took out the piece of paste board and began to inquire my way, and got along completely, and found the number the first time — but the door was locked, and there was no knocker, and I thumpt with my whip handle, but nobody come. And says I to a man going by, don't nobody live here ? and says he yes. Well, how do you get in ? Why, says he, ring; and says I, ring what ? And says he, the bell. And says I, where's the rope ? And he says, pull that little brass nub; and so I gave it a twitch, and I'm sure a bell did ring ; and who do you think open- ed the door, with a white apron afore him ? You couldn't guess for a week a Sundays — so I'll tell you. It was Stephen Fur- long, who kept our district school last winter for 5 dollars a month, and kept bachelor's hall, and helped tend for Gineral Coombs a training days, and make out muster rolls. We was considerably struck up at first, both of us; and when he found I was going to eat dinner with Mr. and Gineral Court, he thought it queer kind of doings — but says he, I guess it will be as well for MEETING AN OLD FRIEND. UNCLE JOSHUA DOWNING IN BOSTON. 523 both of i^s not to know each other a bit more than we can help. And says I, with a wink, you're half right, and in I went. There was nobody in the room but Mr. and his wife, and not a sign of any dinner to be seen any where — though I thought now and then, when a side door opened, I could smell cupboard, as they say. I thought I should be puzzled enough to know what to say, but I hadn't my thoughts long to myself. Mr. has about as nimble a tongue as you ever heard, and could say ten words to my one, and I had nothing to do in the way of making talk. Just then I heard a ringing, and Stephen was busy opening the door and letting in the Gineral Court, who all had their hats off, and looking pretty scrumptious, you may depend. I didn't see but I could stand along side of 'em without disparagement, except to my boots, which had just got a lick of beeswax and tallow — not a mite of dinner yet, and I began to feel as if 'twas nearer supper-time than dinner-time — when all at once two doors flew away from each other right into the wall, and what did I see but one of t the grandest thanksgiving din- ners you ever laid your eyes on — and lights on the table, and silyer candlesticks and gold lamps over head — the window shutters closed — I guess more than, one of us stared at first, but we soon found the way to our mouths — I made Stephen tend out for me pretty sharp, and he got my plate filled three or four times with soup, which beat all I ever tasted. I sha'n't go through the whole dinner again to you — but I am mistaken if it cost me much for victuals this week, if I pay by the meal at Mr. Doolittle's, who comes pretty near up to a thanksgiving every day. There was considerable talk about stock and manufactories and lier bilities and rimidies and a great GINERAL COOMBS. 524 MARK TIVAIX'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. loss on stock. I thought this a good cliance for me to pat in a ^ord — for I calculated 1 knew as much about raising stock and keeping over as any of 'em. Says I to Mr. , there's one thino" I've always observed in my experience in stock — just as sure as you try to keep over more stock than you have fodder to carry them well into April, one half will die on your hands, to a sartinty — and there's no remedy for it — I've tried it out and out, and there's no law that can make a ton of hay keep over ten cows, unless you have more carrots and potatoes that you can throw a stick at. This made some of the folks stare who didn't know much about stock — and Steve give me a jog, as much as to say, keep quiet. He thought I was getting into a quog-mire, and soon after, giving me a wink, opened the door and got me out of the room into the entry. After we had got out of hearing, says I to Steve, how are you getting on in the world — should you like to come back to keep our school if I could get a vote for you ? — not by two chalks, says Steve — I know which side my bread is buttered better than all that — I get 12 dollars a month and found, and now and then some old clothes, which is better than keeping a school at 5 dol- lars and find myself and work out my highway tax besides — then turning up the cape of my neic coat, says he, I guess I've dusted that before now — most likely, says I, but not in our district school. Your respectful uncle, Joshua Downing. I AM a poor man, but i hav this consolashun: i am poor by acksident, not desighn. jOSH BiLLTNGS. AN ACCOUNT OF JOHN PH(ENIX'S STEWARDSHIP. 525 JOHN PHCENIX RENDERS THE EDITOR OF THE " SAN DIEGO HERALD " AN ACCOUNT OF HIS STEWARDSHIP. BY GEORGE H. DERBY. " Te Deum Laudamus." — Judge Ames has returned. .With the completion of this article my labors are ended; and wiping my pen on my coat-tail, and placing it behind my sinister ear, with a graceful bow and bland smile for my honored admirers, and a wink of intense meaning for my enemies, I shall abdicate, with dignity, the " Arm-Chair " in favor of its legitimate proprietor. By the way, this " Arm-Chair " is but a pleasant fiction o£ "the Judge's" — the only seat in the Herald office being the empty nail keg, which I have occupied while writing my leaders upon the inverted sugar box that answers the purpose of a table. But such is life. Divested of its poetry and romance, the objects of our highest admiration become mere commonplaces, like the Herald's chair and table. Many ideas which we have learned to love and reverence, from the poetry of imagination, as tables,, become old sugar boxes on close inspection and more intimate acquaintance. ' Sic ' — but I forbear that sickening and hackneyed quotation. During the period in which I have had control over the Herala I have endeavored, to the best of my ability, to amuse and interest its readers, and I cannot but hope that my good-humored efforts have proved successful. If I have given offense to any by the tone of my remarks, I assure them that it has been quite unin- tentional, and to prove that I bear no malice, I hereby accept their apologies. Certainly no one can complain of a lack of ver- satility in the last six numbers. Commencing as an Independent Journal, I have gradually passed through all the stages of incip- ient Whiggery, decided Conservatism, dignified Recantation, budding Democracy, and rampant Radicalism, and I now close the series with an entirely literary number, in which I have care- fully abstained from the mention of Baldo and Wigler — I mean,^ Wagler and Bildo ; no, never mind — as Toodles says, I haven't mentioned any of 'ent, but been careful to preserve a perfect armed neutrality. 526 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. The paper this week will be found particularly stupid. Thts is the result of deep design on my part ; had I attempted any- thing remarkably brilliant, you would all have detected it, and said, probably with truth : Ah, this is Phoenix's last appearance; THE EDITOR S CHAIR. he has tried to be very funny, and has made a miserable failure of it. Hee! hee! hee! Oh, no, my Public, an ancient weasel may not be detected in the act of slumber, in that manner ! I was nrell aware of all this, and have been as dull and prosy as possible, AN A CCOUS'T OF JOHN PHCENIX'S S TE WARDSHIP. 527 to avoid it. Very little news will be found in the Herald this week : the fact is, there never is much news in it, and it is very well that it is so ; the climate here is so delightful, that residents, in the enjoyment of their doles far niente, care very little about what is going on elsewhere, and residents in other places care very little about what is going on in San Diego, so all parties are likely to be gratified with the little paper, " and long may it wave." In conclusion, I am gratified to be able to state that Johnny's office (the fighting department), for the last six weeks, has been a sinecure, and with the exception of the atrocious conduct of one miscreant, who was detected very early one morning in the act of chalking ASS on our office door, and who was dismissed with a harmless kick, and a gentle admonition that he should not write his namiC on other persons' property, our course has been peace- ful, and undisturbed by any expression of an unpleasant nature. So, farewell Public : I hope you will do well; I do, upon my soul. This leader is ended, and if there be any man among you who thinks he could write a better one, let him try it, and if he succeeds, I shall merely remark, that I could have done it myself if I had tried. Adios ! Respectfully Yours. INTERVIEW BETWEEN THE EDITOR AND PHCENIX. The Thomas Hunt had arrived ; she lay at the wharf at New Town, and a rumor had reached our ears that " the Judge " was on board. Public anxiety had been excited to the highest pitch to witness the result of the meeting between us. It had been stated publicly that "the Judge" would whip us the moment he arrived; but though we thought a conflict probable, we had never been very sanguine as to its terminating in this manner. Coolly we gazed from the window of the Office upon the New Town road ; we descried a cloud of dust in the distance; high above it waved a whip lash, and we said, " the Judge" cometh, and "his driving is like Jehu the son of Nimsht, for he driveth furiously." Calmly we seated ourselves in the " arm-chair," and continued our labors upon our magnificent Pictorial. Anon, a step, a heavy step, was heard upon the stairs, and " the Judge" stood before us. "In shape and gesture proudly eminent, stood like a tower : .... but his face deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care 528 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. sat on his faded cheek; but under brows of dauntless courage and considerable pride, waiting revenge." We rose, and with an unfaltering voice said: "Well, Judge, how do you do ? " He made no reply, but commenced taking off his coat. We removed ours, also our cravat. * * * « * * * * The sixth and last round is described by the pressman and com- positors as having been fearfully scientific. We held " the Judge" down over the Press by our nose (which we had in- serted between his teeth for that purpose), and while our hair was em- ployed in holding one of his hands, we held the other in our left, and with the " sheep's-foot " bran- dished above our head, shouted to him, " Say Waldo." "Never!" he gasped : "Oh! my Bigler he would have muttered, But that he 'dried up ' ere the word was uttered. " At this moment, we dis- covered that we had been laboring under a " mis- understanding," and through the amicable intervention of the piessman, who thrust a roller between our faces (which gave THE JUDGE. ECONOMICAL INDEED. 529 the whole affair a very different complexion), the matter was finally settled on the most friendly terms — " and without pre- judice to the honor of either party." We write this while sitting without any clothing, except our left stocking, and the rim of our hat encircling our neck like a "ruff" of the Elizabethan era — that article of dress having been knocked over our head at an early stage of the proceedings, and the crown subsequently torn off ; while the Judge is sopping his eye with cold water in the next room, a small boy standing beside the sufferer with a basin, and glancing with interest over the advertisements on the second page of the San Diego Herald, a fair copy of which was struck off upon the back of his shirt, at the time we held him over the Press. Thus ends our description of this long anticipated personal col- lision, of which the public can believe precisely as much as they please. If they disbelieve the whole of it, we shall not be at all offended, but can simply quote, as much to the point, what might have been the commencement of our epitaph, had we fallen in the conflict — " Here Lies PnoeNix." ECONOMICAL INDEED. "Economy is wealth," but the most economical person yet heard of is a shoe dealer in a small town in M , who stops his clock when he closes his store at night, in order to save time. — Neivspaper. 530 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. HANS BREITMANN'S PARTY. BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. Hans Breitmann gife a barty, Dey had biano-blayin'; I felled in lofe mit a 'Merican frau, Her name vas Madilda Yane. She hat haar as prown ash a pretzel, Her eyes vas himmel-plue, Und ven dey looket indo mine, Dey shplit mine heart in two. HANS breitmann' S PARTY. Hans Breitmann gife a barty, I vent dere, you'll pe pound. I valtzet mit Madilda Yane Und vent shpinnen round und round. De pootiest Fraulein in de House, She vayed 'pout dwo hoondred pound, Und efery dime she gife a shoomp She make de vindows sound. HANS LREITMANN'S PARTY^ Hans Breitmann gife a barty, I dells you, it cost him dear. Dey rolled in more ash sefen kecks Of foost-rate Lager Beer. Und venefer dey knocks de shpicket in De Deutschers gifes a cheer. I dinks dat so vine a barty Nefer coom to a het dis year. Hans Breitmann gife a barty; Dere all vas Souse und Brouse, Ven de sooper comed in, de gompany Did make demselfs to house; Dey ate das Brot und Gensy broost, Ue Bratwurst and Braten fine, Und vash der Abendessen down Mit four parrels of Neckarvvein. Hans Breitman gife a barty We all cot troonk ash bigs. I poot mine mout to a parrel of bier Und emptied it oop mit a schwigs. Und den I gissed Madilda Yane Und she shlog me on de kop, Und de gompany fited mit daple-lecks Dill de coonshtable made oos shtop, Hans Breitmann gife a barty — Where ish dat barty now ! Where ish de lofely golden cloud Dat fioat on de moundain's prow ? Where ish de himmelstrahlende Stern — De shtar of de shpirit's light ? All goned afay mit de Lager Beer — Afay in de ewigkeit ! 53' ij -^ 2 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAE V OF IICMOR. A NEW PATENT MEDICINE OPERATION. BY MORTIMER M. THOMPSON. /T)ORTIMER M. THOMPSON, once so widely known as Q. K. Philander ^^ Doesticks, was born in Michigan in 1830, and found his way to New York as a journalist, where liis dashing and extravagant drolleries soon attract- ed attention. He had long survived their popularity when he died, in 1875. As I too desired to have a mansion on the Fifth Avenue, like the Medical Worthy of Sarsaparilla memory, and wished, like him, to be able to build a patent medicine palace, with a private chapel under the back-stairs, and a conservatory down cellar, I cast about me for some means whereby the requisite cash might be reputably accumulated. I feared that the Panacea and Cure-Everything trick had been played too often, but I determined to make one big try, and I think that at last my fortune is made. Congratulate me — I am immortalized, and I've done it myself. My name will be handed down to posterity as that of a univer- sal benefactor. The hand which hereafter writes on the record of Fame the names of Ayer, Sands, Townsend, Moffat, Morrison and Brandreth must also inscribe, side by side with these distin- guished appellations, the no less brilliant cognomen of the undy- ing Doesticks. Emulous of the deathly notoriety which has been acquired by the medicinal worthies just mentioned, /also resolved to achieve a name and a fortune in the same reputable and honest manner. Bought a gallon of tar, a cake of beeswax, and a firkin of lard, and in twenty-one hours I presented to the world the first batch of " Doesticks Patent, Self- Acting, Four Horse-Power Balsam," designed to cure all diseases of mind, body or estate, to give strength to the weak, money to the poor, bread and. butter to the hungry, boots to the barefoot, decency to blackguards, and com- mon sense to the Know-Nothings. It acts physically, morally, mentally, p'-ychologically, physiologically and geologically, and it is intended to make our sublunary sphere a blissful paradise, to which Heaven itself shall be but a side-show. I have not yet brought it to absolute perfection, but even now A AEJV PATENT MEDICINE OPERATION. 5'» t it acts with immense force, as you will perceive by the accom- panying testimonials and records of my own individual expe- rience. You will observe that I have not resorted to the usual manner of preparing certificates: which is, to be certain that all those intended for Eastern circulation shall seem to come from some formerly unheard-of place in the West, while those sent to A PATENT MEDICINE. the West shall be dated at some place forty miles east of sun- rise. But I send to you, as representing the western country, a certificate from an Oregon farmer. "Dear Sir: The land composing my farm has hitherto been so poor that a Scotchman couldn't get his living off it; and so stony that we had to ;">lice our potatoes and plant them edgeways; but, hearing of your balsam, I put some on 534 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. tl e corner of a ten-acre lot surrounded by a rail-fence, and in the morning I found the rocks had entirely disappeared — a neat stone wall encircled the field, and the rails were split into ovenwood and piled up symmetrically in my back yard. "Put half an ounce into the middle of a huckleberry swamp — in two days it was cleared off, planted with corn and pumpkins, and had a row of peach-trees in full bloom through the middle. " As an evidence of its tremendous strength, I would state that it drew a strik- ing likeness of my eldest daughter — drew my youngest boy out of the mill-pond — drew a blister all over his stomach — drew a load of potatoes four miles to market, and eventually drew a prize ofninety-seven dollars in the State Lottery. * ' And the effect upon the inhabitants hereabout has been so wonderful that they have opened their eyes to the good of the country, and are determined to vote for a Governor who is opposed to frosts in the middle of June, and whc will make a positive law against freshets, hail-storms and the seventeen-year locusts." There, isn't that some? But I give one more, from a member of the senior class in a Western college, who, although misguided, neglected and ignor- ant, is undoubtedly as honest and sincere as his Prussianized education will a:dmit of. I have corrected the orthography, and revised some gram- matical inaccuracies ; but, besides attending to these trifles, inserting marks of punctuation, and putting the capitals in the right places, I assure you I have made no alteration. "Sall Harbor, June 31, 1854. " My Dear Doctor. [You know I attended medical lectures half a winter, and once assisted in getting a crooked needle out of a baby's leg ; so I under- stand perfectly well the theory and practice of medicine, and the Doctor is per- fectly legitimate under the Prussian system.] By the incessant study required in this establishment, I had become worn down so thin that I was obliged to put on an overcoat to cast a shadow — but accidentally hearing of your Balsam, I obtained a quantity, and, in obedience to the Homoeopathic principles of this Institution, took an infinitesimal dose only ; in four days I measured one hun- dred and eighty-two inches round the waist; could chop eleven cords of hickory wood in two hours and a half ; and, on a bet, carried a yoke of oxen two miles and a quarter in my left hand, my right being tied behind me, and if any one doubts the fact, the oxen are still to be seen. '* About two weeks after this, I had the pleasure of participating in a gun- powder explosion, on which occasion my arms and legs were scattered over the village, and my mangled remains pretty equally distributed throughout the entire county. " Under these circumstances my life was despaired of, and my classmates had bought a pine coffin, and borrowed whole shirts to attend the funeral in ; when A NE W PA TENT MEDICINE OPERA TION. 535 the invincible power of your four horse-power balsam (which I happened to have in my vest pocket) suddenly brought together the scattered pieces of my body — collected my limbs from the rural districts— put new life into my shat- tered frame, and I was restored uninjured to my friends, with a new set of double teeth. " I have preserved the label which enveloped the bottle, and have sewed it into the seat of my pantaloons, and now I bid grim death defiance, for I feel that I am henceforth unkillable, and in fact I am even now generally designated the ' Great Western Achilles.' " Yours entirely, SKI Hy.' »> I feel that, after this, I need give you no more reports of third persons, but will detail some of my own personal' experience of the article. I caused some to be applied to the Washtenaw Bank after its failure, and while the Balsam lasted the Bank redeemed its notes with specie. The cork of one of the bottles dropped upon the head of a childless widow, and in six weeks she had a young and blooming husband. Administered some to a hack-driver in a glass of gin and sugar, and that day he swindled but seven people, and only gave two of them bad money in change. Gave a few drops gratis to a poor woman who was earning a precarious subsistence by making calico shirts with a one-eyed needle, and the next day she was discovered to be heir to a large fortune. Gave some to an up-town actor, and that night he said '* damned " only twenty-one times. One of the daily papers got the next dose, and in the next edition but one there were but four editorial falsehoods, seven indecent advertisements, and two columns and a half of home- made " Foreign Correspondence." Caused fifteen drops to be given to the low comedian of a Broadway Theatre, and that night he was positively dressed more like a man than a monkey, actually spoke some lines of the author, made only three inane attempts at puerile witticisms — only twice went out of his way to introduce some grossly indeli- cate line into his part, and, for a wonder, lost so much of his self-conceit that for a full half hour he did not believe himself the greatest comedian in the world. Gave some to a newsboy, and he manufactured but three 536 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. fires, a couple of murders, and one horrible railroad accident, in the next thirty minutes. Put some on the outside of the Crystal Palace, and the same day the stock went from twenty-two up to forty-four. Our whole Empire City is entirely changed by the miraculous power of " Doesticks' Patent Self-acting Four Horse - Power Balsam." The gas is lighted on the dark nights, instead of on the moonlight evenings — there are no more highway robberies in the streets, or, if there are, the offenders, when arrested, are instantly discharged by the police magistrate. No more build- ing materials on the sidewalks ; no more midnight murders ; no more Sunday rows ; no more dirty streets ; no more duels in Hoboken ; and no more lies in the newspapers. Broadway is swept and garnished: the M. P.'s are civil, and the boys don't steal any more dogs. In fact, so well content are we now with our City, that we feel, as the Hibernian poet so beauti- fully says: " O, if there be an Elysium on earth, Itis this— it is this!" It \z a wize man who profifits bi hiz own experience — but it iz a good deal wizer one, who lets the rattlesnaik bite the other phellow. Josh Billings. THE CENTIPEDE AND THE BARBARIC YAK. 537 THE CENTIPEDE AND THE BARBARIC YAK. BY G. T. LANIGAN. While a Centipede was painfully toiling over the LibyLn Desert he was encountered by a barbaric Yak, who scornfully asked him how were his poor Feet. The humble Creature made no reply at the time, but some days later found the barbaric Yak taken in the nets of the Hunter and almost devoured by THE BARBARIC YAK AND THE CENTIPEDE Insects, which fled at the approach of the Centipede. " Help, help, my good friend !" exclaimed the unfortunate Beast; " I can- not move a muscle in these cruel Toils, and the ravenous Insects have devoured my delicate Flesh." "■ Say you so ? " responded the Centipede. " Can you really not defend yourself ? " " Alas! how can I ? " replied the Yak. •' See you not how straitly I am bound ? " " And is your Flesh then so delicate ? " " It is, though I say it who should not." "■ Then," said the Centipede, <'I guess I'll take a bite myself." Moral. — The other man's Extremity is often o.ur Opportunity. ^2^ MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE CAYOTE. BY MARK TWAIN. Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie- dog villages, the first antelope and the first wolf. If I remember rightly, this latter was the regular cayote (pronounced ky-^-te) of the farther deserts. And if it was^ he was not a pretty creature, or respectable either, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward, and can speak with confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye. and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely ! — so scrawny and ribby and coarse - haired and pitiful. When he sees you, he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage- brush, glancing over his shoulder at you from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again, another fifty, and stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels, and puts such a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon that by the time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a Minie rifle, and by the time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time yon have " drawn a bead " on him vou see well enoujrh that nothing but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where he is now. But if you start a swift-footed dog THE C A VOTE. c-^n. after him, you will enjoy it ever so much — especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself and has been brought un to think he knows something about speed. The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder, that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out straighter behind, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain ! And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote, and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the cayote glides along and never pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot is; and next he notices that he is getting fagged, and that the cayote actually has ta slacken speed a little to keep from running away from him — and f/ien that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with concentrated and desperate energy. This " spurt " finds him six feet behind the gliding enemy, and twa miles from his friends. And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the cayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to say: "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, bub — business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day " — and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold, that dog is solidary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude ! It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around;, climbs the nearest sand-mound and gazes into the distance; shakes his head reflectively, and then, without a word, he turns and jogs along back to his train, and takes up a humble position under the hindmost wagon, and feels unspeakably mean, and 540 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. looks ashamed, and hangs his tail at half-mast for a week. And for as much as a year after that, whenever there is a great hue and cry after a cayote, that dog will merely glance in that direc- tion without emotion, and apparently observe to himself, " I believe I do not wish any of the pie." ' The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding deserts, along with the lizard, the jackass-rabbit and the raven, and gets an uncer- tain and precarious living, and earns it. He seems to sub- sist almost wholly on the carcases of ' oxen, mules and ' horses that have ^. dropped out of emi- \{ rf gi'siit trains and ■^""4 died, and upon ^ windfalls o f car- • ■--"* rion, and occasion- al legacies of offal bequeathed to him by white men who have been opulent enough to have something better to butcher than condemned army bacon. He will eat anything in the world that his first cousins, the desert-frequenting tribes of In- dians, will, and they will eat any- thing they can bite. It is a curious fact that these latter are the only creatures known to history who will eat nitro-glycerine, and ask for more — if they survive. The cayote of the deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains has a peculiarly hard time of it, owing to the fact that his relations, the Indians, are just as apt to be the first to detect a seductive scent on the desert breeze, and follow the fragrance to the late ox it emanated from, as he is himself; and when this occurs, he has to content himself with sitting off at a little distance, watching those people strip off and dig out everything edible, and walk off with it. Then he and the waiting ravens explore the skeleton RESPECT TO RELATIVES. THE HODJA'S HOUSE. :^ai and polish the bones. It is considered that the cayote, and the obscene bird, and the Indian of the desert, testify their blood kinship with each other in that they live together in the waste places of the earth on terms of perfect confidence and friendship, while hating all other creatures and yearning to assist at their funerals. He does not mind going a hundred miles to breakfast, and a hundred and fifty to dinner, because he is sure to have three or four days between meals, and he can just as well be traveling and looking at the scenery, as lying around doing noth- ing and adding to the burdens of his parents. THE HODJA'S HOUSE. BY S, S. COX . The Hodja having built his house to his own satisfaction and that of everybody else — offers it for sale. He makes a bargain, but asks of the purchaser, as a favor, to be allowed to drive a nail on the wall of one of the rooms ; the nail to be his own property. This is granted. The buyer is soon established in the house. Shortly after mid- nio;ht, the owner hears a knock at his outer door. He descends to inquire : " Who is there ? " " It is I," says the Hodja ; '' I wish to tie a string on my nail." Two or three days pass, when again the knock is heard about the same hour. Again the demand is made : " What is wanting ? " The answer comes : '' I pray you, good friend, I should like to untie that string from my property." This performance being repeated several times, compels the purchaser to abandon his purchase for a song. The moral of which is : to make sure of the character of the vender, when y oil become the vendee. 542 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE BOY AND THE TORTOISE. BY BIERCE. " Permit me to help you on in the world, sir," said a boy *o a traveling tortoise, placing a glowing coal upon the animal's back. "Thank you," replied the unconscious beast; "I alone am THE BOY AND THE TORTOISE. responsible for the time of my arrival, and I alone will determine the degree of celerity required. The gait I am going will enable rae to keep all my present appointments." A genial warmth began about this time to pervade his upper crust, and a moment after he was dashing away at a pace com- paratively tremendous. "How about those engagements?" sneered the grinning urchin. "I've recollected another one," was the hasty reply. THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 1^.4.3 THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. BY T. B. ALDRICH. In one of the episodes in his entertaining volume of "Vagabond Adventures," Mr. Keeler takes the reader with him on a profes- sional cruise in Dr. Spaulding's Floating Palace. This Floating Palace — a sort of Barnum's Museum with a keel — was designed for navigation on Southern and Western rivers, and carried a cargo of complex delights that must have much amazed the sim- ple dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and Mississippi. Here, on board of this dramatical Noah's Ark, the reader finds himself on the pleasantest terms conceivable with negro minstrels, danseuses, apostolic wax-works, moral acrobats, stuffed animals, vocalists, and a certain Governor Dorr. It was with a thrill of honest pleasure that I came uporx this picturesque outcast unexpectedly embalmed, like a fly in amber, in Mr. Keeler's autobiography. There was a time when I was proud to know this Governor Dorr; when I hung upon the rotund music of his lips, listened to his marvelous stories of moving accidents by flood and field, and was melted to the very heart at those rare moments when, in a three-cornered room in the rear of Wall's Drug Store, he would favor me with some of the most lachrymose and sentimental poems that ever came of a despond- ent poet. At this epoch of my existence, Governor Dorr, with his sarcastic winks, his comic melancholy, his quotations from Shakespeare, and his fearful knowledge of the outside world, was in my eyes the personification of all that was learned, lyrical, romantic and daring. A little later, my boyish admiration was shattered by the discovery that my Admirable Crichton was — well, it is of no use now to mince words — an adventurer and a gambler. With a kind of sigh that is at present a lost art to me, I put him aside with those dethroned idols and collapsed dreams which accumulate on one's hands as one advances in life, and of which I already had a promising collection when I was about twenty. I cast off Governor Dorr, I repeat; but, oddly enough, Governor Dorr never cast me off, but persisted in turning up at intervals of four or five years, in the tender and pathetic charac- ter of "the friend of my youth." 544 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. As Governor Dorr is the only gentleman in his line of busi- ness who ever evinced any interest in me, I intend to make the most of him; and, indeed, among my reputable acquaintances, there is none who deserves to fare better at my hands. My repu- table acquaintances have sometimes bored me, and taught me nothing:. Now Governor Dorr, in the ethereal shape of a reminiscence, has not only been a source of great amuse- ment to me at various times, but has taught me by his own funest example that whatever gifts a man may possess, if he have no moral prin- ciple he is a failure. Wanting the gift of hon- esty, Governor Dorr was a gambler and a sharper, and is dead. / I was a schoolboy at Rivermouth, when Gov- ernor Dorr swept like a brilliant comet into the / narrow arc of my ob- i-y servation.* One day in the summer of i8 — , I was going home from school, when I saw, standing in front of Wall's Drug Store a showily dressed person, who seemed to me well advanced in years — that is to say, twenty-five or thirty. He was the centre of a small circle of idle fellows about town, who were GOVERNOR DORR * " Governor Dorr," I should explain, was a sobriquet, but when or how it attached itself to him, I never knew. His real name I suppress for the sake of some that may bear it, if there are any so unfortunate. THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 545 drinking in with obvious relish one of those pre-Raphaelite narra- tives which I was afterwards destined to swallow with open- mouthed wonder. The genial twinkle of the man's blue eyes, the glow of his half-smoked cigar, and the blaze of the diamond on his little finger, all seemed the members of one radiant family. To this day I cannot disassociate a sort of glitter with the mem- ory of my first glimpse of Governor Dorr. He had finished speaking as I joined the -group; I had caught only the words, " and that was the last of gallant Jack Martinway," delivered in a singularly mellow l^arytone voice, when he turned abruptly and disappeared behind the orange and purple jars 'in Dr. Wall's shop-window. Who is gallant Jack Martinway, I wondered, and who is this dazzling person that wears his best clothes on a week-day ? I took him for some distinguished military hero, and, vrith a fine feeling for anachronism, immediately connected him with the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh in Mitchell's Geography — a work I was at that time neglecting with considerable perseverance. The apparition of so bewildering a figure in our staid, slow- going little town was likely to cause a sensation. The next day in school I learned all about him. He was Governor Dorr; he had once been a boy in Rivermouth, like us, but had gone off years ago to seek his fortune, and now he had come back im- mensely wealthy from somewhere — South America or the Chincha Islands, where he was governor — and was going to settle down in his native town and buy the *' Janvrin Place " — an estate which the heirs were too poor to keep, and nobody else rich enough to purchase. This was appetizing, and after school I wandered up to Wall's Drug Store to take a look at my gilded townsman, of whom I was not a little proud. I was so dazed at the time, that I do not recollect how it all came about; but Governor Dorr was in the shop, holding a glass of soda-water in one hand and leaning elegantly on the Gothic fountain; I entered with the weak pretence of buying a slate- pencil; the Governor spoke to me, and then — I can recall noth- ing except that, when I recovered from my embarrassment and confusion, I was drinking soda-water with the Great Mogul, strangling myself with the lively beverage, and eliciting from him the laughing advice that I shouldn't drink it while it was boiling. i; a 6 MA RK TWA IN ' S LIB J? A J? Y OF HUMOR. It was an aggravated case of friendship at first sight. In less than a week my admiration for Governor Dorr was so pure, unselfish and unquestioning that it saddens me now to remember it, knowing that the stock is exhausted. Every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon — our half-holidays — I hurried to Wall's Drug Store to meet my friend. Here were his headquarters, and a most profitable customer he must have been, for when he was not drinking soda-water he was smoking the Doctor's cigars. In the rear of the shop was a ;mall triangular room where Dr, Wall manufactured a patent eclectic cough syrup, and where he allowed us to sit rainy afternoons. Nothing about me, as I write, is so real as a vision of that musty, penny-royal-smelling little room, with Governor Dorr sitting on a reversed mortar and accenting the spirited parts of some Homeric story with a cir- cumflex flourish of the Doctor's iron pestle, on the end of which, was always a thin crust of the prescription last put up. Rows oC croupy square bottles filled with a dark -colored mixture and labeled "Cough Syrup" look down on me from their dusty shelves, and I am listening again as of old. In pleasant weather we sauntered about town, c strolled off into those pretty lanes which make Rivermouth, and rural places like Rivermouth, a paradise for lovers. In all these hours with Governor Dorr, I never knew him to let fall a word that a child should not hear. Perhaps my innocence and my unconcealed reverence for him touched and drew the better part of his heart to me, for it had a better part — one uncontaminated little piece for children. Our conversations turned chiefly on his travels, literature, literary men and actors. His talk, I may remark, w-as very full on literary men; he knew them well, and was on astonishingly familiar personal terms with all the American authors quoted in my Third Reader, especially with Joel Barlow, who, I subse- quently learned, had quitted this planet about a half a century previous to the birth of my friend. He called him '' Joel," quite familiarly, and sometimes his " dear old friend Joe Barlow, the Hasty-pudding Man!" Shakespeare, however, was the weakness, or the strength, of Governor Dorr. I am glad he did not have the effrontery to claim ]iis acquaintance /// propria persofia. I am afraid that would have shaken my faith and spoiled me for enjoying my THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 547 comrade's constant quotations. I am not sure, though, for I trusted so implicitly in the superior knowledge of Governor Dor' that on one occasion he convinced me that Herrick was a con- temporary American author, and not an old English poet, as I had read somewhere. " Why, my dear boy," he exclaimed, " I know him well. He is a fellow of infinite jest, and his father edits the New York Sunday Atlas ! " And the Governor drew forth a copy of the journal, and showed me the name of Anson Herrick in large capitals at the head of the paper. After that, I was entirely adrift on what is called " the sea of English literature." • To return to the Bard of Avon, "the immortal Bill," as my friend apostrophized him in moments of enthusiasm. The daily talk of the Governor would have come to a dead-lock, if he had been debarred the privilege of drawing at sight on his favorite poet. Take Shakespeare from Dorr, and naught remains. It was remarkable how the plays helped him out ; now it was Othello, and now it was Touchstone, and now it was Prospero, who flew to his assistance with words and phrases so pat that they seemed created for the occasion. His voice, at that time rich, strong, and varied as the lines themselves, made it a delight to hear him repeat a long passage. I was not often able to follow the sense of the text, but the music bore me on with it. I can hear him now, saying : "In such a night Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night. "In such a night, Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love To come again to Carthage." I never read the lines but I feel his hand laid suddenly upon my shoulder, and fancy myself standing on the old Mill-Dam Bridge at Rivermouth, with the water rushing through the sluices, and the rest of the pond lying like a sheet of crinkled silver in the moonlight. 1^ 48 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. My intercourse with Governor Dorr was not carried on without the cognizance of my family. They raised no objections. The Governor was then in his best style, and, by his good-nature and free-an-d-easy ways, more or less won everybody. The leading men of the town touched their hats to him on the street, and chatted with him at the post-office. It must be confessed, though, that the Governor was a sore puzzle to those worthy people. His fluency of money and language was not a local characteristic. He had left the place about ten years before, a poor boy, and now he had dropped down from nobody knew where, like an aerolite, mysteriously gay and possibly valuable. The fact is, he must have been merely a gambler at this period, and had not entered upon that more aggressive career which afterwards made him well known to the police of Boston, New York and New Orleans. At all events, his fame had not reached Rivermouth; and though my family wondered what I saw in him or he in me to build a friendship on — the disparity in our ages being so great — they by no means objected to the intimacy, and it continued. What impressed me most in Governor Dorr, next to his liter- ary endowments, was his generous nature, his ready and practi- cal sympathy for all sorts of unfortunate people. I have known him to go about the town half the morning with a blind man, sell- ing his brooms for him at extortionate prices. I have seen the tears spring to his eyes at the recital of some story of suffering among the factory hands, many of whom were children. His love for these pale little men and women, as I think of it, is very touching; and it seems one of the finest things in the world to me now, and at the time it struck me as an epical exhibition of human sympathy, that he once purchased an expensive pair of skates for a little hoy who had been born a cripple. No doubt these facile sympathies were as superficial as letter- paper, as short-lived as those midges which are born and become great-grandfathers and die in the course of a single hour; but they endeared the Governor to me, and maybe, when the fir.'.l reckoning comes, all those good impulses will add up to something- handsome; who can tell ? Nearly six months had passed since the beginning of our acquaintance, when one morning my noble friend and my copy of Shakespeare — an illegibly printed volume bound in seedy law- THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. r^g calf, but the most precious of my earthly treasures — disap- peared from the town simultaneously. Governor Dorr had gone, as he had come, without a word of warning, leavino- his "ancient," as he was pleased to call me, the victim of abject despair. What complicated events caused the abrupt departure of my friend and my calf-skin Shakespeare from Rivermouth never trans- pired. Perhaps he had spent all his money ; perhaps he was wanted by a pal in New York, for some fresh piece of deviltry; or, what is more probable, the pastoral sweetness of life at River- mouth had begun to cloy on his metropolitan palate. It may have been five or it may have been ten months after his exodus that my late companion became known to the town in his true colors. He had been tripped up^in some disreputable transaction or another, and had played a rather unenviable role in the New York police reports. I had been entertaining, not an angel, but a gambler unawares. My mortification v.-as unassumed, and I banished the fascinating Governor Dorr from my affections forever. A few years afterwards I left Rivermouth mysdf. The friend of my youth had become a faded memorj'. I had neither seen nor heard of him in the meanwhile ; and the summer when I planned to pass the whole of a long vacation at my boyhood's home, the Governor assumed but a subordinate part in the asso- ciations naturally evoked by the proposed visit. In my first walk through the town after my arrival, it was with a sort of comical consternation that I beheld Governor Dorr standing in front of Wall's Drug Store, smoking the very same cigar, it seemed, and skillfully catching the sunlight on the facets of that identical diamond ring. The same, and not the same. He looked older, and was not so well groomed as he used to be; his lower jaw had grown heav- ier and his figure not improved. There was a hard expression in his face, and that inexplicable something all over him which says as plainly as a whisper to the ear, " This is a Black Sheep." At the crossing our eyes met. Would he recognize his quon- dam chum and dupe, after all these years ? The Governor gazed at me earnestly for ten seconds, then slowly drew back, and lift- ing his hat with a magnificent, grand air quite his own, made me 5 5 O MARK TWAIN ' S LIBRA RV OF HUMOR. an obeisance so involved and elaborate that it would be mere rashness to attempt to describe it. The lady at my side gave my arm a convulsive grasp, and whispered, " Who is that dreadful man ? " " O, that ? — that is the friend of my youth ! " Though I made light of the meeting, I was by no means amused by it, I saw that if Governor Dorr insisted on presuming on his , old acquaintance, he might render it very disagreeable for me ; I might have to snub him, perhaps quarrel with him. His pres- ence was altogether annoying and depressing. It appears that the man had been lying about Rivermouth for the last twelvemonth. When he was there before he had mysti- fied the town, but now he terrified it. The people were afraid of him, and Governor Dorr knew it, and was having what he would have described as " a very soft thing." He touched his hat to all the pretty girls in the place, talked to everybody, and minis- tered to the spiritual part of his nature, now and then, by walk- ing down the street familiarly with an eminent divine, who did not deem it prudent to resent the impertinence. For it was noticed by careful observers, that when any person repelled Governor Dorr, that person's wood-house caught on fire mysteri- ously, or a successful raid was undertaken in the direction of that person's family plate. These trifling mishaps could never be traced to the Governor's agency, but the remarkable precision with which a catastrophe followed any slight offered to him made the townspeople rather civil than otherwise to their lively guest. The authorities, however, vyere on the alert, and one night, a week after my arrival, the Governor was caught flagrante delicto, and lodged by Sheriff Adams in the Stone Jail, to my great relief, be it said; for the dread of meeting the man in my walks to the post-office and the reading-room had given me the air of a person seeking to elude the vigilance of justice, I forget which of the laws the Governor had offended — he was quite impartial in his transgressions, by the way — but it was one that insured him a stationary residence for several months, and I considered myself well rid of the gentleman. But I little knew of the resources of Governor Dorr. He had been in the habit of contributing poems and sketches of a lurid nature to one of the local newspapers, and now, finding THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 551 the time to hang heavily on his hands in the solitude of his cell, the window of which overlooked the main street of the town, he began a series of letters to the editor of the journal in ques- tion. These letters were dated from the Hotel d' Adams (a graceful tribute to the sheriff of the county), and consisted of descriptions of what he saw from his eel' -window, with sharp, shrewd and witty hits at the peculiarities of certain notable persons of the town, together with some attempts at fine writing not so successful. His observations on the townspeople were delicious. He had a neat, humorous touch, which, with training and under happier 'stars, might have won him reputation. How I enjoyed those letters ! How impatiently I awaited the semi-weekly appearance of the squalid journal containing them; with what eager fingers I unfolded the damp sheet, until, alas ! one luckless morning there came a letter devoted wholly to myself. The " Leaves from the Diary of a Gentleman of Elegant Leis- ure " no longer seemed witty to me. And in truth, this leaf was not intended to be witty. It was in the Governor's best senti- mental vein. He informed me that he had "from afar" watched over my budding career with the fondness of an elder brother, and that his heart, otherwise humble and unassuming, owned to a throb of honest pride and exultation when he remembered that it was he who had first guided my " nursling feet " over the flow- ery fields of English poesy, and bathed with me up to the chin in that " Pierian flood " which I had since made all my own. And so on through a column of solid nonpareil type. Altogether, his panegyric placed me in a more ridiculous light than any amount of abuse could have done. His sentiment was a thousand times more deadly than his satire. Though my vacation was not at an end by several weeks, I quietly packed my valise that night, and fled from the friend of my youth. I find that I am using the capital letter / rather freely in this sketch — a reprehensible habit, into which many people who write autobiography are very apt to fall; but really, my inten- tion is to give as little of myself and as much of my friend as possible. In the two or three years that followed this ignominious flight 552 MARA' TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. from my native town, I frequently heard of Governor Dorr indi- rectly. He had become famous now, in his modest way. I heard of him in New Orleans and in some of the Western cities. Once, at least, he reappeared in Rivermouth, where he got into some difficulty with a number of non-combatant turkeys prepared for Thanksgiving, the result of which was he spent that day of general festivity at the Hotel d'Adams. But New York was, I believe, liis favorite field of operations, as well as mine. I cannot explain why the man so often came uppermost in my mind in those days; but I thought of him a great deal at inter- vals; and was thinking of him very particularly one dismal Novem- ber afternoon in 185-, as I sat alone in the editorial room of the Saturday Press, where I had remained to write after the depart- ure of m}'' confreres. It was a melancholy, small room, up two flights of stairs, in the rear of a building used as a warehouse by a paper firm doing business in the basement. Though bounded on all sides by tur- bulent streams of traffic, this room was as secluded and remote as if it had stood in the middle of the Desert of Sahara. It would have made an admirable scenic background for a noiseless midday murder in a melodrama. But it was an excellent place in which to write, in spite of the cobwebbed rafters overhead and the confirmed symptoms of scrofula in the plastering. I did not settle down to work easily that afternoon; my fancy busied itself with everything except the matter in hand. I fell to thinking of old times and Rivermouth, and what comical things boys are with their hero-worship and their monkey-shines; and how I used to regard Governor Dorr as a cross between Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh; and what a pitiable, flimsy hero he was in reality — a king of shreds and patches. *' Why were such men born ? " I said to myself. " Nature in her severe economy creates nothing useless, unless it be the ruminative moth or the New Jersey mosquito; the human species alone is full of failures monstrous and inexplicable." In the midst of this the door opened, and Governor Dorr stood before me. I have had pleasanter surprises. There was a certain deprecating air about him as he raised his hat in a feeble attempt at his old-time manner, a tacit confession that he couldn't do it. With his closely cropped hair, he looked like a prize-fighter retired from business. He was unshaven and THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 553 pathetically shabby. His features were out of drawing, and wore that peculiar retributive pallor which gin and water in unfair pro- portions are said to produce. The dye had faded from his heavy mustache, leaving it of a dark greenish tint not becoming to his style of beauty. His threadbare coat was buttoned unevenly across his chest close up to the throat, and was shiny at the cuffs and along the seams. His hat had a weed on it, which struck me as being strange, as I did not remember that anybody had been hanged recently. I afterwards formed a theory touch- ing that weed, based on the supposition that the hat was some- body else's property. Altogether, the Governor looked as if he had fallen upon evil days since our last meeting. There was a hard, cold look in his eyes which, in spite of his half-apologetic attitude, was far from reassuring. Given a voice in the matter, I would not have chosen to have a private conference with him that dull November afternoon in that lonely room in the old barracks on Spruce Street. The space occupied by the editorial tables was shut off from the rest of the office by a slight wooden rail extending across the apartment. In the centre of this rail was a gate, which my visitor, after a moment's hesitation, proceeded to open. As I noted down all the circumstances of the interview while it was fresh in my mind, I am able to reproduce the Governor's words and manner pretty faithfully. He closed the gate behind him with laborious care, advanced a few steps, rested one hand upon the back of a chair, and fixed a pair of fishy eyes upon me. If he intended to fascinate me, he failed ; if he intended to make me feel extremely nervous, his success was complete. " Telemachus," he said, at length, in a voice that had lost its old music, and may be succinctly described as ropy —"you know I used to call you Telemachus in those happy days when I was your ' guide, philosopher and friend ' — you see before you a reformed man." I suppose I was not entirely successful in concealing my inward conviction. "So help me Bob!" exclaimed the Governor, "I am going to reform, and get some decent clothes " — casting a look of unutterable scorn on his coat-sleeve. 554 MARJC TIVALVS LIBRARY OF HUMOR. The idea of connecting a reformatory measure with an increase of wardrobe struck me as neat, and I smiled, " I am going to be honest," continued Governor Dorr, not heed- ing my unseemly levity ; *' ' Honest lago.' I am going to turn over a new leaf. I don't like the way things have been going. I wasn't intended to be a low fellow. I ain't adapted to being an outcast from society. *We know what we are, but we don't know what we may be,' as the sublime Shakespeare remarks. Now, I know what I am, and I know what I'm going to be. I'm going to be another man. But I must get out of New York first. The boys wouldn't let me reform. ' The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me!' I know too many people here and too many people know me. I am going to New Orleans. My old friend Kendall of the Picayune knows my literary qualifications, and would give me an engage- ment on his paper at sight ; but I'm not proud, and if worst came to worst I could get advertisements or solicit subscribers, and work my way up. In the bright lexicon of a man who means what he says, 'there's no such word as fail.' He doesn't know how to spell it." The Governor paused and looked at me for a reply ; but as I had nothing to say, I said it. " I've been down to Rivermouth," he resumed, a trifle less spiritedly, " to see what my old chums would do towards paying my way to New Orleans. They gave me a good deal of good advice, especially Colonel B ; but I am out just twenty dol- lars, traveling expenses. Advice, however excellent, doesn't pay a fellow's passage to New Orleans .in the present disordered state of society. I have collected some money, but not enough by a few dollars ; and presuming on the memory of those days — those Arcadian days, when we wandered hand in hand through the green pastures of American poesy — I have come to you for a temporary loan — however small," he added hastily, "to help me in becoming an honest citizen and a useful member of so- ciety." I listened attentively to the Governor's statement, and believed not a syllable of it, not so much as a hyphen. It had a fatally familiar jingle ; I had helped to reform people before. Never- theless, the plan's misery was genuine, and I determined not to throw him over altog^ether. But I did not wish him to consider THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 555 me the victim of his cleverness ; so I frankly told him that I did not believe a word about his reforming, and that if I gave him a little pecuniary assistance, it was solely because I u'^ed to think kindly of him when I was a boy. The Governor was so affected by this that he searched in sev- eral pockets for a handkerchief, but not finding one, he wiped away what I should call a very dry tear with the cuff of his sleeve. " 'Had I but served my God,' " he remarked, " 'with half the zeal' I have fooled away my chances, ' he would not have left me in mine age' to solicit financial succor in this humiliating fashion." It was the mendaciousness of Jeremy Diddler toned down by the remorse of Cardinal Wolsey. "I am well aware," I said coldly, "that the few dollars I intend to give you will be staked at the nearest faro-table or squandered over the bar of some drinking-shop, I want you to understand distinctly that you. are not imposing on me." Now the journal of which I was part proprietor had a weekly circulation of less than forty thousand copies, and at the end of the week, when we had paid a sordid printer and an unimagina- tive paper-maker, we were in a condition that entitled us to rank as objects of charity rather than as benefactors of the poor. A five-dollar bill was all my available assets that November after- noon, and out of this I purposed to reserve two dollars for my dinner at Mataran's. I stated the case plainly to the Governor, suggesting that I could get the note changed at the Tribune office. He picked up the bill which I had spread out on the table between us, remarking that he thought he could change it. Whereupon he produced a portly pocket-book from the breast of his coat, and from the pocket-book so fat a roll of bank-notes that I glowed with indignation to think he had the coolness to appropriate three-fifths of my slender earnings. " New Orleans, you know," he remarked, explanatorily. The Governor was quite another man now, running dexter- ously over the bills with a moist forefinger in the gayest of spirits. He handed me my share of the five-dollar bill with the manner of a benevolent prince dispensing his bounties, accorded me the privilege of grasping his manly hand, raised his hat with 256 MARK TWA IN'S LIBRAR V OF HUMOR. a good deal of his old quasi aristocratic flourish, and was gone. There is 'this heavenly quality in a deed of even misplaced charity : it makes the heart of the doer sit lightly in his bosom. I treated myself handsomely that afternoon at dinner, regarding myself, in the abstract, as a person who ought to dine well, and was worthy of at least half a pint of table claret. I tested the delicacies of Mataran's cuisine as far as my purse would allow; but when I stepped to the desk to pay the reckoning, those two one-dollar bills rather awkwardly turned out to be counter- feits ! Well, I suppose I deserved it. The frequency with which Governor Dorr's name figured in the local police reports during the ensuing twelve months leads me to infer that he did not depart for New Orleans as soon as he expected. Time rolled on, and the Saturday Press, being loved by the gods, died early, and one morning in 1861 I found myself at liberty to undertake a long-deferred pilgrimage to Rivermouth. On arriving at my destination, cramped with a night's ride in the cars, I resolved to get the kinks out of me by walking from the station. Turning into one of the less-frequented streets, in order not to meet too many of my townsfolk, I came abruptly upon a hearse jogging along very pleasantly, and followed at a little distance by a single hack. When all one's friends can be put into a single hack, perhaps it is best that one should be buried expeditiously. A malign urchin stood at the corner whistling shrilly through his fingers, which he removed from his lips with an injured air long enough to answer my question. " Who's dead ? Why, Guvner Dorr's dead. That's 'im," curving a calliopean thumb in the direction of the hearse. The pity of it ! The forlornness of the thing touched me, and a feeling of gratitude went out from my bosom towards the two or three hacks which now made tlieir appearance around the corner and joined the funeral train. Broken down in his prime with careless living, Governor Dorr a few months previously has straggled back to the old place to die; and thus had chance — which sometimes displays a THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 557 keen appreciation of dramatic effect — once more, and for the last time, brought me in contact with the friend of my youth. Obeying the impulse, I turned and followed the procession until it came to the head of that long, unbuilt street which, stretching in a curve from the yawning gate of the cemetery into the heart of the town, always seemed to me like a great siphon draining the life from Rivermouth. Here I halted, and watched the black carriages as they crawled down the road, growing smal- ler and smaller, until they appeared to resolve themselves into one tiny coach, which, lessening in the distance, finally vanished through a gateway that seemed about a foot high. The gratest bores in the world are those who are eternally tricing to prove to yu that 2 and 2 allwuss makes 4. Josh Billings. 558 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. THE CAMEL AND THE ZEBRA. BY BIERCE. " What have you there on your back ? " said a zebra, jeeringly, to a " ship of the desert " in ballast. '' Only a bale of gridirons," was the meek reply. THE CAMEL AND THE ZEBRA. " And what, pray, may you design doing with them ? " was the incredulous rejoinder. " What am I to do with gridirons ? " repeated the camel, con- temptuously. " Nice question for yoti, who have evidently just come off one ! ' People who wish to throw stones should not live in glass houses; but there ought to be a few in their vicinity. SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS. 559 "SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS." BY R. J. BURDETTE. " I just rolled out here from the grocery store," said the little green apple, as it paused on the sidewalk for a moment's chat with the banana peel; "lam waiting here for a boy. Not a small, weak, delicate boy," added the little green apple, proudly, "but a great big boy, a great bulky, strong, leather-lunged, noisy fifteen-year-older, and little as I am, you will see me double up that boy to-night, and make him wail and howl and yell. Oh, I'm small, but I'm good for a ten acre field of boys, and don't you forget it ! All the boys in Bur- lington," the little green apple went on, with just a shade of pitying contempt in its voice, "couldn't fool around me as any one of them fools around a banana." " Boys seems to be your game," drawled the banana peel, lazily; "well, I suppose they are just about strong enough to afford you a little amusement. For my own part, I like to take some- body of my size. Now, here comes the kind of a man I usually do business with. He is large and strong, it is true, but — " And just then a South Hill merchant, who weighs about 231 pounds when he feels right good, came along, and the banana THE STRENGTH OF A BANANA PEEL. 560 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. peel just caught him by the foot, lifted him about as high as the awning post, turned him over, banged him down on a potato basket, flattening it out until it looked like a splint door-mat, and the shock jarred everything loose in the show-window. And then, while the fallen merchant, from various quarters of the globe, fished his silk hat from the gutter, his spectacles from the cellar, his handkerchief from the tree-box, his cane from the show- window, and one of his shoes from the eaves-trough, and a little boy ran for the doctor, the little green apple blushed red and shrank a little back out of sight, covered with awe and mortifi- cation. " Ah," it thought, " I wonder if I can ever do that? Alas, how vain I was, and yet how poor and weak and useless I am in this world." But the banana peel comforted it, and bade it look up and take heart, and do well what it had to do, and labor for the good of the cause in its own useful sphere. " True," said the banana peel, " you cannot lift up a two hundred pound man and break a cellar door with him, but you can give him the cholera morbus, and if you do your part, the world will feel your power and the medical colleges will call you blessed." And then the little green apple smiled and looked up with grateful blushes on its face, and thanked the banana peel for its encouraging counsel. And that very night, an old father who writes thirteen hours a day, and a patient mother who was almost ready to sink from weariness, and a nurse and a doctor, sat up until nearly morning with a thirteen-year-old boy, who was all twisted up into the shape of a figure 3, while all the neighbors on that block sat up and listened, and pounded their pillows, and tried to sleep, and wished that boy would either die or get well. And the little green apple was pleased, and its last words were, *' At least I have been of some little use in this great wide world ! " NATRAL AND UNNATRAL ARISTOKRATS. 561 NATRAL AND UNNATRAL ARISTOKRATS. BY JOSH BILLINGS. Natur furnishes all the nobleman we hav. She holds the pattent. Pedigree haz no more to do in making a man aktually grater than he iz, than a pekok's feather in his hat haz in making him aktually taller. Thiz iz a hard phakt for some tew learn. This mundane earth iz thik with male and femail ones who think they are grate bekauze their ansesstor waz luckey in the sope or tobacco trade; and altho the sope haz run out sum time since, they try tew phool themselves and other folks with the suds. Sope suds iz a prekarious bubble. Thare ain't nothing ho thin on the ribs az a sope suds aristokrat. When the world stands in need ov an aristokrat, natur pitches one into it, and furnishes him papers without enny flaw in them. Aristokrasy kantbe transmitted — natur sez so — in the papers. Titles are a plan got up bi humans tew assist natur in promul- gating aristokrasy. Titles ain't ov enny more real use or nesessity than dog collars are. I hav seen-dog collars that kost 3 dollars on dogs that want worth, in enny market, over 87 1-2 cents. This iz a grate waste ov collar; and a grate damage tew the dog. Natur don't put but one ingredient into her kind ov aristokrasy, and that iz virtew. She wets up the virtew, sumtimes, with a little pepper sass, just tew make it lively. She sez that all other kinds are false; and i beleave natur. I wish every man and woman on earth waz a bloated aristokrat — ?jii>ated with virtew. Earthly manufaktured aristokrats are made principally out ov munny. Forty years ago it took about 85 thousand dollars tew make a good-sized aristokrat, and innokulate his family with the same 562 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. disseaze, but it takes now about 600 thousand tew throw the partys into fits. Aristokrasy, like all other bred stuffs, haz riz. It don't take enny more virtew tew make an aristokrat now, nor clothes, than it did in the daze ov Abraham. Virtew don't vary. Virtew iz the standard ov values. Clothes ain't. Titles aint. A NATURAL ARISTOCRAT. A man kan go barefoot and be virtewous, and be an aristokra*:, Diogoneze waz an aristokrat. His brown stun front waz a tub, and it v/ant on end, at that. Moneyed aristokrasy iz very good to liv on in the present hi kondishun ov kodphis and wearing apparel, provided yu see the munny, but if the munry kind of tires out and don't reach yu, and you don't git ennything but the aristokrasy, you hav got to diet, that's a... NATRAL AND UNNATRAL ARISTOKRATS. 563 I knu ov thousands who are now dieting on aristokrasy. They say it tastes good. I presume they lie without knowing it. Not enny ov this sort ov aristocrasy for Joshua Billings. I never should think ov mixing munny and aristokrasy together; i will take mine seperate, if yu pleze. I don't never expekt tew be an aristokrat, nor an angel; i dont kno az i want tew be one. I certainly should make a miserable angel. I certainly never shall hav munny enuff tew make an aristo- krat. Raizing aristokrats iz a dredful poor bizzness; yu don't never git your seed back. One democrat iz worth more tew the world than 60 thousand manufaktured aristokrats. An Amerikan aristokrat iz the most ridikilus thing in market. They are generally ashamed ov their ansesstors; and, if they hav enny, and live long enuff, they generally hav cauze tew be ashamed ov their posterity. I kno ov sevral familys in Amerika who are tricing tew liv on their aristokrasy. The money and branes giv out sum time ago. It iz hard skratching for them. Yu kan warm up kold potatoze and liv on them, but yu kant warm up aristokratik pride and git even a smell. Yu might az well undertake tew raze a krop ov korn in a deserted brik yard by manuring the ground heavy with tan bark. Yung man, set down, and keep still — yu will hav plenty ov chances yet to make a phool ov yureself before yu die. Josh Billings. 564 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. EXAMPLES OF TURKISH JUSTICE. BY S. S. COX. . In Egypt, long before the Turkish rule in that region, there wsre struggles between the Mamelukes and the Circassians. A Circassian chief, through the advice of a servant, who, though ignorant, was naturally astute, happened by accident to discover the weak points of the ruling government in Egypt. Upon these points, as upon the rounds of a ladder, he ascended to the throne. Formerly, the Circassian had promised the servant that if ever he obtained that eminence the servant should receive the appoint- ment of Chief Judge. The servant's name was Caracoush, mean- ing "blackbird." So, as soon as the chief was enthroned, he gave Caracoush the promised post. Among the many cases that came before him was the following petition: "Being a burglar by profession, and compelled by want to rob a house, I select that of a tailor. To enter it I must njake my way through the courtyard. This is surrounded by a high wall. In jumping from this wall I am caught on the spikes the tailor had fixed in the wall to suspend ropes for the w^Ashing. The result is, I lose an eye. I now demand that my eye be restored, and that the fellow who drove the spike shall be punished." The judge reads the petition, and concludes that justice is due the petitioner. He summons the tailor, to whom the matter is explained. The tailor argues that the thief has no business to jump into his yard in the night, so that if he lost an eye, it is his own fault. But the judge remarks: " The thief is only practicing his profession, and the law only punishes robbers." " If," he says to the tailor, "you had noc driven the spikes in the walls, the thief would not have lost his eye; therefore your eye must pay the forfeit." The poor tailor begs and cries in vain. The veroict is pro- nounced. It must be executed. After a long struggle, the tailor seizes the knees of the judge, kisses them vigorously, and with tears in his eyes, exclaims: "Oh! mighty judge. Your decision is sound, but consider. Am I not supporting a large family — my old mother, my wife, and my seven young children ? They all depend on me, and I EXAMPLES OF TURKISH JUSTICE. 565 myself depend on my two eyes. Am I not a tailor ? Do I not need my two eyes ? If I lose one, how can I pass the thread into the needle's eye ? How can I do my fine sewing? My reputa- tion will suffer and all of us starve! " Seeing some sign of relenting in the judicial countenance, the tailor is encouraged. He resumes, brightening: "I have a neighbor who is a sportsman. When he aims at the game he shuts one eye. Why, great judge, his two eyes are an embarrassment to him! Had he but one, it would save him the trouble of shutting the other. Moreover, what difference does it make to this robber? All he wants is Whether it be mine or that of the sportsman's, what matter ? It is all one to him." The argument sounds plaus- ible. The judge considers a mo- ment, and then sends for the sportsman. In spite of protests, he decrees the loss of the sports- man's superfluous eye. The ver- dict is carried into execution, and judicial logic is vindicated ! an eye pulled out. * * In the interior of Hungary a Turkish agent is sent to buy cavalry horses to recruit for the then probable war with Bulgaria and Greece. While there the agent desires that the proprietor the unfortunate hunter, of a village, with whom he was contracting, should show him a specimen of the Hungarian mode of proceeding. "Wait a few moments," says the proprietor, who is also a magistrate, "and I will see who is in the town jail." Calling his constable, he is informed by that officer that a goose thief had been apprehended during the night, and is in confine- ment. He sends for the criminal. " Are there any witnesses ? " asks the judge, "Two," is the answer ; " the man who owns the goose, and a man who saw the theft." 566 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. After hearing the evidence, the judge, in his fierce and harsh Hungarian-Finnish-Tartaric tongue, calls up the culprit and says: " You have been found guilty, and I fine you ten kreutzers and ten days' imprisonment for stealing the goose! " Thereupon the judge summons the owner of the bird: *' I fine you ten kreutzers and ten days' imprisonment for allowing your goose to be stolen! " Having thus disposed of the parties, the judge, turning to the witness, says : "Sirrah! I fine you ten kreut- zers and ten days' imprisonment for not minding your own busi- ^i^^'i. ness Hilmi Effendi listens with in- terest to this story of Slavonic justice, and remarks that almost as odd a case recently came before one of the courts of Stam- boul. A creditor comes to the judge to have a note sued. It is for 1,500 piastres, and not due until three years after the complaint is made. The judge entertains the suit, and condemns the creditor to confinement for three years. '* For," said his honor: " How do I know where you will be three years hence, so as to pay you the piastres, unless I hold you?" "We agree that this is an improvement on the American custom of the imprisonment ot witnesses in criminal cases. STEALING A GOOSE. A GREAT FIT. 5^7 A GREAT FIT. BY ROBERT HENRY NEWELL. TDOBERT HENRY NEWELL, the Orpheus C. Kerr of every one's acquaint- V ance, is a veteran editor and a prolific author. He was born in New York,_December 13, 1836. *' There was a man in Arkansaw As let his passions rise, And not unfrequently picked out ' Some other varmint's eyes. THE GREAT FIT. " His name was Tuscaloosa Sara, And often he would say, * There's not a cuss in Arkansaw I can't whip any day " One morn, a stranger, passin' by, Heard Sammy talkin' so. When down he scrambled from his hoss, And off his coat did go. 568 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " He sorter kinder shut one eye And spit into his hand, And put his ugly head one side, And twitched his trovvsers' band. " ' My boy,' says he, ' it's my beUef, Whomever you may be. That I Icin make you screech, and smell Pertikler agony.' " ' I'm thar,' says Tuscaloosa Sam, And chucked his hat away ; < I'm thar,' says he, and buttoned up As far as buttons may, " He thundered on the stranger's mug, The stranger pounded he ; And oh! the way them critters fit Was beautiful to see. "They clinched like two rampageous bears, And then went down a bit ; They swore a stream of six- inch oaths And fit, and fit, and fit. "When Sam would try to work away. And on his pegs to git. The stranger'd pull him back ; and so, They fit, and fit, and fit! " Then like a pair of lobsters, both Upon the ground were knit. And yet the varmints used their teeth. And fit, and fit, and fit ! ! "The sun of noon was high above, And hot enough to split, But only riled the fellers more. That fit, and fit, and fit ! ! ! A GREAT FIT. " The stranger snapped at Sammy s nose, And shortened it a bit ; And then they both swore awful hard, And fit, and fit, and fit ! ! ! ! " The mud it flew, the sky grew dark, And all the litenins lit ; But still them critters rolled about, And fit, and fit, and fit ! ! ! ! ! a THE REMAINS. *' First Sam on top, then t'other chap ; When one would make a hit, The other'd smell the grass ; and so. They fit, and fit, and fit ! ! ! ! ! ! "The night came on, the stars shone out As bright as wimmen's wit ; And still them fellers swore and gouged, And fit, and fit, and fit !!!!!! ! "The neighbors heard the noise they made, And thought an earthquake lit ; Yet all the while 'twas him and Sam As fit, and fit, and fit !!!!!!! ! 5^9 570 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. '' For miles arouna che noise was heard ; Folks couldn't sleep a bit, Because them two rantankerous chaps Still fit, and fit, and fit !!!!!!! ! ! •"But jist at cock-crow, suddenly^ There came an awful pause, And I and my old man run out To ascertain the cause. ^* The sun was rising in the yeasty And lit the hull concern ; But not a sign of either chap Was found at any turn. **Yet, in the region where they fit, We found, to our surprise. One pint of buttons, two big knives, Some wiiskers, and four eyes! " CHRISTMAS IN PINEVILLE. 571 CHRISTMAS IN PINEVILLE. BY WILLIAM TAPPAN THOMPSON. 7-xVlLLIAM TAPPAN THOMPSON was bom in Ohio in 1812, and died ^^ in 1882. A great part of his Ufe was passed in Georgia, where the scene of his various humorous sketches, " Major Jones's Courtship," "Major Jones's Sketches of Travel," and "Major Jones's Characters of Pineville," is laid. His books had at one time a vast popularity. Pineville, December 20, 1842. To Mr. Thompson: — Dear Sir : — It seems our fokes always is in a fuss. First it was movin', then it was hog- killin', and now every- thing is topsy - turvy making ready for Cris- mus. I do b'Heve the niggers is skowered every spot from the garret to the doresteps. ' and every time I come into the house they's all hollerin' out, " Thar, now, Mas' Joe, jest look at your tracks ! " and *' Don't you step on the heath, for it's jest red- dened," and "Don't you spit agin the jam," and sich foolery, jest as if people's houses wasn't made for 'em to live in. It really puts me out of all patience to see sich nonsensical doins. And mother, she's had all the nig- gers choppin' sassage meat to make mince-pies, and poundin' spice and ginger, and makin' marvels and beatin' egs to make pound-cake, and all sorts "don't you spit agin the jam." 572 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. of sweet doins for Crismus ; for when she takes any thing into her head, she ain't a gwine to be outdone by nobody. She ses Crismus don't come but once a year nowadays, and she's gwine to treat it hansum when it does cum — she's gwine to show the Stall inses that she's used to as good livin' as most of fokes. Mother and old Miss Stallins and two or three more old ladies is in a mighty fidget about it, and old Miss Stallins dreamed it was a fact, and mother dreamed she seed two moons t'other night, and one of 'em was all blazin' with fire and fiyin' about in the sky like all wrath. I don't 'zactly know what to think about it, but ther's one thing sartin, it's got to begin monstrous early in the mornin' on the third day of April if I ain't up to see it. If any- body was to set the woods a-fire 'bout Pineville, jest at that time, I wouldn't like to answer for the consequences among the old wimin. But I'm not a gwine to let sich matters interfere with my marryin' specelation. I call it specelation, for, you know, ther's no tellin' how these things is gwine to turn out. In the fust place, it's a chance if a body gits the gall he's courtin', and after he's got her all to himself, for better or for worse, it's a chance again if she don't turn out a monstrous site worse nor he tuck her for. But I think mine's a pretty safe bisiness, for Miss Mary is jest a leetle the smartest and best and the butifulest gall in Georgia. I've seed her two or three times sense the candy pullin', and I aint more'n half so 'fraid of her as I used to be. I told her t'other night I had a Crismus gift for her, which I hoped she would take and keep. " What is it, Majer ! " ses she. " Oh," ses I, " it's something what I wouldn't give to nobody else in the world! " " Well, but what is it f—do tell me! " " Something," ses I, " what you stole from me a long time ago, and sense you've got it, I want you to keep it, and give me one like it in return." " Well do tell me what it is, fust," ses she, and I seed her cut her eye at Miss Carline, and sort o' smile. " But, will you give me one in return ? " ses I. " What, Majer ?— tell me what ? " " I'll tell you Crismus eve," ses I. '' But will you give mejours in return ?" CHRISTMA S IN PINE VILLE. cr-y " Yours/ eh, my — ." then her face got as red as a poppy, and she looked down. " You know what, Miss Mary," ses I. " Will you ?" She didn't say nothin', but blushed worse and worse. " Now, mind," ses I, "I must have a answer Crismus eve." '' Well," ses she — and then she looked up and laughed, and sed, " Exchange is no robbery, is it, sister Carline?" " No, sis," ses she, " but I reckon Joseph got his pay 'bout the same time you stole his — " " Stop, stop, sister, Majer didn't say his heart — " "There, there!" ses Miss Carline and Miss Kesiah, clappin' ther hands, and laughin' as loud as they could — "there, there, little innocent sister has let the cat out of the bag, at last ! I told you so, Majer." I never felt so good afore in all my born days, and Miss Mary, pore gall, hid her face in her hands and begun to cry, she felt so about it. That's the way with the galls, you know; they always cry when they feel the happyest. But I soon got her in a good humor, and then I went home. I'm gwine to bring her right up to the scratch Crismus, or I ain't here. Crismus is over, and the thing is done did! You know I told you in my last letter I was gwine to bring Miss Mary up to the chalk on Crismus. Well, I done it, slick as a whistle, though it come mighty nigh bein' a serious bisness. But I'll tell you all about the whole circumstance. The fact is, I's made my mind up more'n twenty times to jest go and come right out with the whole business; but whenever I got whar she was, and whenever she looked at me with her witchin' eyes, and kind o' blushed at me, I always felt sort o' skeered and fainty, and all what I made up to tell her was forgot, so I couldn't think of it to save me. But you's a married man, Mr. Thompson, so I couldn't tell you nothin' about popin the question, as they call it. It's a mighty grate favor to ax of a pretty gall, and to people what ain't used to it, it goes monstrous hard, don't it ? They say widders don't mind it no more'n nothin'. But I'm makin' a transgression, as the preacher ses. Crismus eve I put on my new suit, and shaved my face as slick as a smoothin' iron, and after tea went over to old Miss Stallinses. 574 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. As soon as I went into the parler, vvhar they was all settin' round the fire, Miss Carline and Miss Kesiah both laughed right out. "There ! there ! " ses they, " I told you so ! I know'd it would be Joseph." "What's I done. Miss Carline?" ses I. " You come under little sister's chicken bone, and I do believe she know'd you was comin' when she put it over the dore." "No, I didn't — I didn't no such thing, now!" ses Miss Mary; and her face blushed red all over. " Oh, you needn't deny it," ses Miss Kesiah ; "you belong to Joseph now, jest as sure as ther's any charm in chicken bones." I know'd that was a first-rate chance to say something, but the dear little creeter looked so sorry and kep' blushin' so, I couldn't say nothin' zactly to the pint ! so I tuck a chair and reached up and tuck down the bone and put it in my pocket. "What are you gwine to do with that old chicken bone now, Majer?" ses Miss Mary. " I'm gwine to keep it as long as I live," ses I, " as a Crismus present from the handsomest gall in Georgia." When I sed that, she blushed worse and worse. " Ain't you 'shamed, Majer ? " ses she. "Now you ought to give /z^r a Crismus gift, Joseph, to keep all her life," sed Miss Carline. " Ah," ses old Miss Stallins, "when I was a gall we used to hang up our stockins — " "Why, mother! " ses all of 'em, "to say stockins right be- fore—" Then I felt a little streaked, too, 'cause they was all blushin' as hard as they could. " Highty-tity! " ses the old lady — "what monstrous 'finement, to be shore! I'd like to know what harm ther is in stockins. People nowadays is gittin so mealy-mouthed they can't call nothin by its right name, and I don't see as they's any better than the old-time people was. When I was a gall like j^ou, child, I use to hang up my stockins and git 'em full of presents." The galls kep laughin' and blushin'. "Never mind," ses Miss Mary, " Majer' s got to give me a Crismus gift — v.-on't you, i\Iajer ? " "Oh, yes," ses T, "yon hnov.' T promised you one." "But I didn't mean that" ses she. • CHRISTMAS IN PI NEVILLE. 575 '' I've got one for you, what I want you to keep all your life, but it would take a two-bushel bag to hold it," ses I. " Oh, that's the kind! " ses she. " But will you promise to keep it as long as you live ? " ses I, "Certainly I will, Majer." — "Monstrous 'finement nowadays— old people don't know nothin' about perliteness," said old Miss Stallins, jest gwine to sleep with her nittin in her lap. " Now you hear that. Miss Carline," ses I. " She ses she'll keep it all her life." " Yes, I will," ses Miss Mary — " but what is it ? " - " Never mind," ses I, "you hang up a bag big enough to hold it and you'll find out what it is, when you see it in the mornin'." Miss Carline winked at Miss Kesiah, and then whispered to her — then they both laughed, and looked at me as mischievous as they could. They 'spicioned something. "You'll be shore to give it to me, now, if I hang up a bag! " ses Miss Mary. ''And promise to keep it," ses I. •' Well, I will, cause I know that you wouldn't give me nothin' that wasn't worth keepin'." They all agreed they would hang up a bag for me to put Miss Mary's Crismus present in, on the back porch, and about ten o'clock I told 'em good evenin' and went home. I sot up till midnight, and when they was all gone to bed I went softly into the back gate, and went up to the porch, and thar, shore enough, was a great big meal-bag hangin' to the jice. It was monstrous unhandy to git to it, but I was 'termined not to back out. So I sot some chairs on top of a bench and got hold of the rope, and let myself down into the bag; but jest as I was gittin in, it swung agin the chairs, and down they went with a terrible racket; but nobody didn't wake up but Miss Stallinses old cur dog, and here he come rippin' and tearin' through the yard like rath, and round and round he went try in' to find what was the matter. I scrooch'd down in the bag, and didn't breathe louder nor a kitten, for fear he'd find me out, and after a while he quit barkin'. The wind begun to blow 'bominable cold, and the old bag kep' turnin' round and swingin' so it made me seasick as the mischief. I was afraid to move for fear the rope would break and let nie 57^ MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. fall, and thar I sot with my teeth rattlin' like I had a ager. It seemed like it would never come daylight, and I do believe if I didn't love Miss Mary so powerful I would froze to death ; for mv heart was the only spot that felt warm, and it didn't beat mcre'n two licks a minit, only when I thought how she would be apprised in the mornin', and then it went in a canter. Bimeby the cussed old dog come up on the porch and begun to smell about the bag, and then he barked like he thought he'd treed something. " Bow! wow! wow! " ses he. Then he'd smell agin, and try to git up to the bag. "Git out! " ses I, very low, for fear the galls mought hear me. "Bow! wow!" ses he. "Be gone! you 'bominable fool," ses I; and I felt all over in spots, for I 'spected every minit he'd nip me; and what made it worse, I didn't know whar abouts he'd take hold. "Bow! wow! wow! " Then I tried coaxin'. " Come here, good feller," ses I, and whistled a little to him, but it wasn't no use. Thar he stood and kep up his everlastin' whinin' and barkin', all night. I couldn't tell when daylight was breakin', only by the chickens crowin', and I was monstrous glad to hear 'em, for if I'd had to stay thar one hour more, I don't believe I'd ever got out of that bag alive. Old Miss Stallins come out fust, and as soon as she seed the bag, ses she: *' What upon yeath has Joseph went and put in that bag for Mary? I'll lay its a yearlin' or some live animal, or Bruin wouldn't bark at it so." She went in to call the galls, and I sot thar, shiverin' all over so I couldn't hardly speak if I tried to — but I didn't say nothin', Bimeby they all come runnin' out on the porch. " My goodness ! what is it?" ses Miss Mary. " Oh, it's alive !" ses Miss Kesiah ; " I seed it move." " Call Cato, and make him cut the rope," ses Miss Carline, " and let's see what it is. Come here, Cato, and get this bag down." " Don't hurt it, for the world !" ses Miss Mary. Cato untied the rope that was round the jice, and let the bag down easy on the floor, and I tumbled out all covered with corn meal, from head to foot. "Goodness gracious !" ses Miss Mary; *' if it ain't the Majer himself !" CHRISTMAS IN PINEVILLE. 577 "Yes," ses I, "and you know you promised to keep my Cris- mus present as long as you lived." The galls laughed themselves almost to death, and went 1 brushin' off the meal as fast as they could, sayin' they was gwir .. to hang that bag up every Crismus till they got husbands to^. Miss Mary— bless her bright eyes !— she blushed as beautiful as a morning - glory, and sed she'd stick to her word. She was right out of bed, and her hair wasn't k o m e d , and her dress wasn't fix'd at all, but the way she looked pretty was real distractin'. I do believe ef I was froze stiff, one look at her sweet face, as she stood thar look- in' down to the floor with her roguish eyes, and her bright curls fallin' all over her snowy neck, would have fotched me too. - I tell you what, it was worth hangin' in a meal bag from one Crismus to another to feel as happy as I have ever sense. I v.'ent home after we had the laugh out, and sot by the fire till I got thawed. In the forenoon all the Stallinses come over to our house, and we had one of the greatest Crismus dinners that ever was seed in Georgia, and I don't believe a happier company ever sot down to the same table. Old Miss Stallins and mother settled the match, and talked over everything that ever happened in ther families, and laughed at me and Mary, and cried about / THE CHRISTMAS BAG. 5 78 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. ther dead husbands, cause they wasn't alive to see ther children married. It's all settled now, 'cept we hain't sot the weddin' day. I'd like to have it all over at once, but young galls always like to be engaged a while, you know, so I s'pose I must wait a month or so. Mary (she ses I mustn't call her Miss Mary now) has been a good deal of trouble and botheration to me ; but if you could see her, you wouldn't think I ought to grudge a little sufferin' to git sich a sweet little wife. You must come to the weddin' if you possibly kin. I'll let you know when. No more from Your friend, till death, Jos. Jones. N. B. — I like to forgot to tell you about cousin Pete. He got snapt on egnog when he heard of my engagement, and he's been as raeller as hoss-apple ever sense. Take all the phools out ov this world, and thare wouldn't be enny phun, nor profifit, living in it. Josh Billings. ARTilMUS WARD AND THE PRINCE OF WALES. 579 ARTEMUS WARD AND THE PRINCE OF WALES. BY ARTEMUS WARD. I WAS drawin' near to the Prince, when a red-faced man in MilHngtery close grabd holt of me and axed me whare I was goin' all so bold ? " To see Albert Edard, the Prince of Wales," sez I ; " who are you ? " He sed he was the Kurnal of the Seventy Fust Regi- ment, Her Magis- ty's troops. I told him I hoped the Seventy Onesters was in good helth, and was passin' by when he ceased hold of me agin, and sed in a tone of indigent cirprise : "What? Impos- sible ! It kannot be ! B 1 a r s t my hize, sir, did I un- derstan' you to say that you was actoo- ally goin' into the presents of his Royal Iniss?" " That's what's the matter with me," I replied. " But blarst my hize, sir, its onprecedented. It's orful sir. Nothin' like it hain't happened sins the Gun Power Plot of Guy Forks. Owdashus man, who air yu?" " Sir, sez I, drawin' myself up & puttin' on a defiant air, " I'm a Amerycan sitterzen. My name is Ward. I'm a husband. THE PRINCE OF WALES. & rgo MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. the father of twins, which I'm happy to state thay look like me. By perfession I'm a exhibiter of wax works tSz: sich." "Good God !" yelled the Kurnal; "the idee of a exhibiier of wax figgers goin' into the presents of Royalty ! The British Lion may well roar with raje at the thawt !" Sez I, "Speakin' of the British Lion, Kurnal, I'd like to make a bargin with you fur that beast fur a few weeks to add to my Show." I didn't meen nothin' by this. I was only gettin' orf a goak, but you orter hev seen the Old Kurnal jump up and howl. He actooally f-oamed at the mowth. " This can't be real," he showtid. " No, no. It's a horrid dream. Sir, you air not a human bein' — you hav no existents — yu're a Myth !" "Wall," sez I, "old hoss, yule find me a ruther oncomfort- able Myth ef you punch my inards in that way agin." I began to git a little riled, fur when he called me a Myth he puncht me putty hard. The Kurnal now commenst showtin fur the Seventy Onesters. I at fust thawt I'd stay& becum a Marter to Brit- ish Outraje, as sich a course mite git my name up & be a good advertisement fur my Show, but it occurred to me that ef enny of the Seventy Onesters shood happen to insert a baronet into my stummick it mite be onplesunt ; & I was on the pint of run- nin' orf when the Prince hisself kum up & axed me what the matter was. Sez I, " Albert Edard, is that you ?" & he smilt & sed it was. Sez I, " Albert Edard, hears miy keerd. I cum to pay my respecks to the futer King of Ingland. The Kurnal of the Seventy Onesters hear is ruther smawl pertaters, but of course you ain't to blame fur that. He puts on as many airs as tho he was the Bully Boy with the glass eye." " Never mind," sez Albert Edard, " I'm glad to see you, Mister Ward, at all events," «fe he tuk my hand so plesunt like, & larfed so sweet that I fell in love with him to onct. He handid me a segar, & we sot dov/n on the Pizarro & commenst smokin' rite cheerful. " Wall," sez I, " Albert Edard, how's the old folks ?" " Her Majesty & the Prince are well," he sed. '• Duz the old man take his Lager beer reglar ?" I inquired. The Prince larfed, & intermatid that the old man didn't let many kegs of that bevridge spile in the sellar in the coarse of a year. We sot & tawked there sum time abowt matters & ARTEMUS WARD AND THE PRINCE OF WALES. eg I things, & bimeby I axed hjm how he hked bein' Prince, as fur as he'd got. ''To speak plain, Mister Ward," he sed, " I don't much like it. I'm sick of all this bowin' ^ scrapin' & crawlin' & hurrain over a boy like me. I would rather go through the country quietly & enjoy myself in my own way, with the other boys, & not be made a Show of to be gaped at by everybody. When the ^^//^ cheer me I feel pleesed, fur I know they meen it; but if these one-horse ofifishuls cood know how I see threw all their moves & understan' exactly what they air after, & knov/d how I larft at 'em in private, thayd stop kissin' my hands &: fawnin' over me as thay now do. But you know, INIister Ward, I can't help bein' a Prince, & I must do all I kin to fit myself for the persi- shun I must sumtime ockepy. " " That's troo," sez I; " sickness &: the docters will carry the Queen orf one of these dase, sure's yer born." The time hevin' arove fur me to take my departer, I rose up «&: sed: "Albert Edard, I must go, but previs to doin' so, I will obsarve that you soot me. Yure a good feller, Albert Edard, & tho I'm agin Princes as a gineral thing, I must say I like the cut of your Gib. When you git to be King, try & be as good a man as your muther has bin ! Be just & be Jenerus, espeshully to showmen, who have allers bin aboosed sins the dase of Noah, who was the fust man to go into the INIenag- ery bizniss, & ef the daily papers of his time air to be beleeved, Noah's colleckshun of livin' wild beests beet ennything ever seen sins, tho I make bold to dowt ef his snaiks was ahead of mine, Albert Edard, adoo !" I tuk his hand, which he shook warmly, & givin' him a perpetooal free pars to my show, & also parses to take hum for the Queen & Old Albert, I put on my hat and walkt away. " Mrs. Ward," I solilerquized as I walkt along—" Mrs. Ward, ef you could see your husband now, just as he prowdly emerjis from the presunts of the futer King of Ingland, you'd be sorry you called him a Beest jest becaws he cum home tired i nite & wantid to go to bed without takin' off his boots. You'd be sorry for tryin' to deprive yure husband of the priceless Boon of liberty, Betsy Jane !" Jest then I met a long perseshun of men with gownds onto 'em. The leader was on horseback, & ridin' up to me, he sed: 582 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " Air you Orange ?" Sez I, " Which ?" " Air you a Orangeman ?" he repeated, sternly. *'I used to peddle lemins," sed I, " but never delt in oranges. They are apt to spile on yure hands. What particler Loonatic Asylum hev you & yure friends escaped frum, if I may be so bold?" Just then a suddent thawt struck me, & I sed, "Oh, yure the fellers \Yho air worryin' the Prince so, & givin' the Juke of Noocastle cold sweats at nite, by yure infernal cata- walins, air you ? Wall, take the advice of a Amerykin sitterzen, take orf them gownds & don't try to get up a religious fite, which is 40 times wuss nor a prize fite, over Albert Edard, who wants to receive you all on a ekal footin' not keerin' a tinker's cuss what meetin'-house you sleep in Sundays. Go home & mind yure bisness, & not make noosenses of yourselves." With which observashuns I left 'em. I shall leave British sile 4th\vith. BRILLIANT DRUNKARDS. 583 BRILLIANT DRUNKARDS. BY C. D. WARNER. It is a temptation to a temperate man to become a sot, to hear what talent, what versatility, what genius, is almost always attrib- uted to a moderately bright man who is habitually drunk. Such a mechanic, such a mathematician, such a poet he would be if he were only sober; and then he is sure to be the most generous, A BRILLIANT DRUNKARD. magnanimous, friendly soul, conscientiously honorable, if he were not so conscientiously drunk, I suppose it is now notorious that, the most brilliant and promising men have been lost to the world in this way. It is sometimes almost painful to think what a sur- plus of talent and genius there would be in the world if the habit of intoxication should suddenly cease; and what a slim chance there would be for the plodding people who have always had tol- erable good habits. The fear is only mitigated by the observa- tion that the reputation of a person for great talent sometimes ceases with his reformation. r S4 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. BIRDOFREDOM SAWIN AS A VOLUNTEER. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. r i he first series of the " Biglow Papers " appeared during the Mexican V/ar in the Boston Courier. Each paper was introduced by a letter from the Rev. Homer Wilbur, of Jaalam Centre, covering a note and poem from his young parishioner, Hosea Biglow.] Mister Buckinum, the follerin Billet was writ hum by a Yung feller of our town that wiiz cussed fool enuff to goe a-trottin' inter Miss Chiff arter a Drum and fife. It ain't Nater for a feller to let on that he's sick o' any bizness that He went intu off his own free will and a Cord, but I rather cal'late he's middlin' tired o' voluntearin By this Time. I b'leeve u may put dependunts on his statemence. For I never heered nothin' bad on him let Alone his havin what Parson Wilbur cals a pongshong for cock- tales, and he sees it was a soshiashun of idees sot him a-goin' arter the Crootin Sargient cos he wore a cocktale onto his hat. his Folks gin the letter to me and i shew it to parson Wilbur and he ses it oughter Bee printed, send It to mister Buckinum, ses he, i don't oilers agree with him, ses he, but by Time,* ses he, I du like a feller that aint a Feared. I have intuspussed a Few refleckshuns hear and thair. We're kind o' prest with Hayin. Ewers respecfly Hosea Biglow. This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our October trainin' A chap could clear right out from there ef 't only looked liked rainin', An' th' Cunnles, tu, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners, An' send the insines skootin' to the bar-room with their banners (Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted), an' a feller could cry quarter Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum an' water. Recollect wut fun we hed, you 'n I an' Ezry Ilollis, Up there to Waltham plain last fall, along o' the Cornwallis ? f * In relation to this expression, I cannot but think that ISIr. Biglow has been too hasty in attributing it to me. Though Time be a comparatively innocent personage to swear by, and though Longinus in his discourse Ilepl "Y>|/ovs has commended timely oaths as not only a useful but sublime figure of speech, yet I have always kept my lips free from that abomination Oiii frrofanum vulgus, I hate your swearing and hectoring fellows. — H. W. t i hait the Site of a feller with a muskit as I du pizn But there is fun to a cornwallis I aint agoin' to deny it. — H. B. BIRDOFREBOM SAWIN AS A VOLUNTEER. 585 This sort o"" thing aint/Vj/ like thet — I wish thet I wuz furder — * Nimepunce a day for killin' folks comes kind o' low fer murder, (Wy, I've worked out to slarterin' some izx Deacon Cephas Billlns, An' in the hardest times there wuz I oilers tetched ten shillins). There's sutthin' gits into my throat thet makes it hard to swaller, It comes so nateral to think about a hempen collar ; It's glory — but, in spite o' all my tryin' to git callous, I feel a kind o' in a cart aridin' to the gallus. But wen it comes to behi' killed — I tell ye I felt streaked 'The fust time 't ever I found out wy baggonets wuz peaked ; Here's how it wuz : I started out to go to a fandango, The sentinel he ups an' sez, " Thet 's furder an' you can go." " None o' your sarse," sez I; sez he, " Stan' back ! " " Aint you a buster?" Sez I, "I'm up to all thet air, I guess I've ben to muster ; 1 know wy sentinels air sot ; you ain't agoin' to eat us ; Caleb hain't no monopoly to court the seenoritas ; My folks to hum air full cz good as hisn be, by golly ! " An' so ez I wuz goin' by, not thinkin' wut would folly, The everlastin' cus he stuck his one-pronged pitchfork in me An' ma.d3 a hole right thru my close ez ef I wuz an in'my. Wal, it beats all how big I felt hooravvin' in ole Funnel Wen Mister Bolles he gin the sword to our Leftenant Cunnle, ^It's Mister Secondary Bolles, f thet writ the prize peace essay; Thet's why he didn't list himself along o' us, I dessay), An' Rantoul, tu, talked pooty loud, but don't put his foot in it, Coz human life's so sacred thet he's principled agin it — Though I myself can't rightly see it's any wus achokin' on 'em, Than pattin' bullets thru their lights, or with a bagnet pokm' on 'em ; How dreffle slick he reeled it off (like Blitz at our lyceum Ahaulin' ribbins from his chops so quick you skeercely see 'em), About the Anglo-Saxon race (an' saxons would be handy To du the bury in' down here upon the Rio Grandy), About our patriotic pas an' our star-spangled banner, Our country's bird alookin' on an' singin' out hosanner, An' how he (Mister B. himself) wuz happy fer Ameriky — I felt, ez sister Patience sez, a little mite histericky. I felt, I swon, ez though it wuz a dreffle kind o' privilege Atrampin' round thru Boston streets among the gutter's drivelage ; I act'lly thought it wuz a treat to hear a little drummin', An' it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz acomin' * he means Not quite so fur I guess. — H. B. t the i-nerant creeter means Sekketary ; but he oilers stuck to his books like cobbler's was to nn ilc-stone. — H. B. 586 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. Wen all on us got suits (darned like them wore in the State prison) An' every feller felt ez though all Mexico was hisn.* This 'ere 's about the meanest place a skunk could wal diskiver (Saltillo's Mexican, I b'lieve, fer wut we call Salt river) ; The sort o' trash a feller gits to cat doos beat all nater, I'd give a year's pay for a smell o' one good blue-nose tater ; The country here thet Mister Bolles declared to be so charmin' Throughout is swarmin' with the most alarmin' kind o' varmin'. He talked about delishis froots, but then it wuz a wopper all, The hoU on 't 's mud an' prickly pears, with here an' there a chapparal , You sea a faller peskin' out, an' fust you know, a lariat Is round your throat an' you a copse, 'fore you can say, ' ' Wut air ye at ? "f You never see sech darned gret bugs (it may not be irrelevant To say I've seen a scarabczns pilularius\ big ez a year old elephant) The rieiment come up one day in time to stop a red bug From runnin' off with Cunnle Wright — 't wuz jest a common cimex lectiilarius. One night I started up on eend an' thought I was to hum agin, I heer a horn ; thinks I, it's Sol the fisherman hez come agin, His bellowses is sound enough — ez I'm a livin' crceter, I felt a thing go thru my leg — 't wuz nothin' more'n a skeeter ! Then there's the yaller fever, tu, they call it here el vomito — (Come, thet wun't du, you landcrab there, I tell ye to le' go my toe ! My gracious ! it's a scorpion thet's took a shine to play with 't, I darsn't skeer the tarnal thing fer fear he'd run away with 't). Afore I come away from hum I hed a strong persuasion Thet Mexicans worn't human beans,§ an ourang outang nation, A sort 'o folks a chap could kill an' never dream on 't arter. No more'n a feller'd dream o' pigs thet he hed hed to slarter ; I'd an idee thet they were built arter the darkle fashion all, An' kickin' colored folks about, you know, 's a kind o' national ; But wen I jined I worn't so wise ez thet ere queen o' Sheby, Fer come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be, An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under ovir eagle's pinions. * it must be aloud that thare's a streak o' nater ia lovin' sho, but it sartlnly is i of the curusest things in nater to see a rispecktable dri goods dealer (deckon off a chutch mayby) a riggin' him- self out in the Weigh they du and struttin' roun J ia the Reign aspilin his trowsis and makin' wet goods of himself. Ef anythin's foolisher and moor dicklus than militerry gloary, it is milishy gloary. — H. B. t these fellers are verry proppilly called Rank Heroes, and the more tha kill the ranker and more Herowick tha bekum. — H. W. % it wuz " tumblebug" as he Writ it, but the parson put the Latten instid. i sed t'other man better meeter, but he said tha was eddykated peepl to Boston, and tha wouldn't stan' it nohow, idnow as tha w.wt/and idnow «r tha v/ood. — H. B. § he means human bcins, that's what he means, i spose he kinder thought tha wuz human beans v/arc the Xisle Poles comes from.— H. B. BIRDOFREDOM SAWm AS A VOLUNTEER. ^gjr Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis, An' walk him Spanish clean right out 'o all his homes an' houses ; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson ! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglo-saxon. The Mex'cans don't fight fair, they say, they piz'n all the water, An' du amazin' lots o' things thet isn't wut they ough' to ; Bein' they haint no lead, they make their bullets out 'o copper. An' shoot the darned things at us, tu, wich Caleb sez aint proper ; He sez they'd ough' to stan' right up an' let us pop 'em fairly (Guess wen he ketches 'em at thet he'll hev to get up airly), > Thet our nation 's bigger'n theirn an' so its rights air bigger, An' thet it's all to make 'em free thet we air puljin' trigger, Thet Anglosaxondom's idee's abreakin' 'em to pieces. An' thet idee 's thet every man doos jest wut he damn pleases : Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I can, I know thet ' ' every man " don't mean a nigger or a Mexican ; An' there's another thing I know, an' thet is, ef these creeturs, Thet stick an Anglosaxon mask onto State prison feeturs, Should come to Jaalam Centre fer to argify an' spout on 't. The gals 'ould count the silver spoons the minnit they cleared out on 't This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur, An'ef it worn't fer wakin' snakes, I'd home agin short meter ; O, wouldn't I be off, quick time, ef 't worn't thet I wuz sartin They'd let the daylight into me to pay me fer desartin 1 I don't approve o' tellin' tales, but jest to you I may state Our ossifers aint wut they wuz afore they left the Bay-State ; Then it wuz "Mister Sawin, sir, you're middlin' well now, be ye» Step up an' take a nipper, sir ; I'm dreffle glad to see ye ; '' But now it's "Ware's my eppylet? here, Sawin, step an fetch it ! An' mind your eye, be thund'rin' spry, or damn ye, you shall ketch it I '* Wal, ez the Doctor sez, some pork will bile so, but by mighty, Ef I hed some on 'em to hum, I'd give 'em linkum vity, I'd play the rogue's march on their hides an' other music foUerin' — But I must close my letter here, fer one on 'em's a hollerin'. These Anglosaxon ossifers — wal, 'tain't no use ajawin', I'm safe enlisted fer the war. Yourn, BiRDOFREDOM SAWUf (-38 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. TRAIN MANNERS. EY R. J. BURDETTE. Genesee. — A woman with three bird-cages and a little girl has just got on the train. She arranges the three bird-cages on a seat, and then she and the little girl stand up in the aisle, and she glares around upon the ungallant men who remain glued to their seats, and look dreamily out of the window. I bend my face down to the tablet and write furiously, for I feel her eyes fastened upon me. Somehow or other, I am always the victim in cases of this delicate nature. Just as I expected ! She speaks, fastening her commanding gaze upon me : " Sir, would it be asking too much if I begged you to let my- self and my little girl have that seat ? A gentleman can always find a seat so much more easily than a lady." And she smiled. Not the charmingest kind of a smile. It was too triumphant to be very pleasing. Of course I surrendered. I said: " Oh, certainly, certainly ! I could find another seat without any trouble." She thanked me, and I crawled out of my comfortable seat, and gathered up my overcoat, my manuscript, my shawl-strap package, my valise, and my overshoes, and she and the little girl went into the vacant premises ; the writ of ejectment had been served, and they looked happy and comfortable. Then I stepped across the aisle ; I took up those bird-cages and set them along on top of the coal box, and sat down in the seat thus vacated. I apologetically remarked to the woman, who was gazing at me with an expression that boded trouble, that " it was much warmer for the canaries up by the stove." She didn't say anything, but she gave me a look that made it much warmer for me, for about five minutes, than the stove can make it for tne canaries. Belvidere. — A woman has just gone out of the car and left the door wide, wide open, and the wind is blowing through the coach a hundred miles a minute. Why is it that a woman never shuts a car door ? Also, why does a man always leave it open ? And indeed, why nobody ever shuts it except the brakeman, and he only closes it for the sake of the noise he can make with it. Yesterday morning, I saw a man go out of a car, and shut the TRAiy MANNERS. 589 door after him. I have traveled very constantly for nearly three years, and this was the first man I ever saw shut the car door after him as he went out. And he only shut it because I was right behind him, trying to get out, with a big vaiise in each hand. When I set down my valises to open the door, I made a few remarks on the general subject of people who would get up in the night to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, but the man was out on the platform, and failed to catch the drift of my remark. I was not sorry for this, because the other passengers seemed to enjoy it quite as well by themselves, and the man whose action called forth this impromptu address was a forbidding look- ing man, as big as a hay wagon, and looked as though he would have banged me clear through the side of a box car if he had heard what I said. I suppose these peo- ple who invariably do the clog. the wrong things at the wrong time are necessary, but they are awfully unpleasant. Cuba. — A woman gets on the train and says a very warm- hearted good-bye to a great cub of a sixteen-year-old boy who sets down her bundles, and turns to leave the car with a gruff grunt that may mean good-bye or anything else. There is a little qui ver on her lip as she calls after him, " Be a good boy, write to me often, and do as I tell you." He never looks around as he leaves the car. He looks just like the kind of a boy who will do just as she tells him, but she must be careful to tell him to do just as he wants to. I have one bright spark of consolation as the train moves on, and I see that boy performing a clumsy satire 590 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. on a clog dance on the platform. Some of these days he will treat some man as gruffly and rudely as he treats his mother. Then the man will climb onto him and lick him ; pound the very sawdust out of him. Then the world will feel better and happier for the licking he gets. It may be long deferred, but it will come at last. I alinost wish I had pounded him myself, while he is young and I felt able to do it. He may grow up into a very dis- couragingly rugged man, extremely difficult to lick, and the world may have to wait a very long time for this act of justice It frequently happens that these bad boys grow up into distress- ingly " bad " men. TRAIl^ MANNERS. We have got as far as Hinsdale, and here we have ceased to progress. The experienced passengers sit as patiently as the train itself. The inexperienced ones fly around and tramp in and out, and leave the door open, and ply the train men and the operator with numerous questions. Sometimes the train men answer their questions, and then sometimes they do not answer them. When they do reply to the eager conundrums, somehow or other the passenger always feels as though he knew a little less than he did before. It is a cruel, deceitful old world, in snow time. A man has gone to the front seat, and is warming his feet by planting the soles of his boots against the side of the stove. As he wears India rubber boots, the effect is marked but not pleasant. As usual, the drinkmg boy is on the car. He has laid regular TRAIN MANNERS. 50 1 siege to the water tank, and, I think, will empty it before we get to Salamanca. I wish to call the attention of the temperance societies to this class of intemperates. There should be a pledge drawn up and some color of ribbon — a bit of watered silk would be appropriate, I suppose — for boys of six and seven years, who are addicted to drinking water at the rate of eighteen tin-cupfuls a minute. Ten or twelve boys of this class can drink a creek dry when they are feeling comfortably thirsty. A friendly passenger wants to talk. I am not feeling particu- larly sociable this morning, and consequently I do not proprose to talk to anybody. He asks how I like this kind 'of weather, and I say, " Splendidly." He laughs feebly, but encouragingly, and says there has been a little too much snov/. I say, " Not for health; it was just what we needed." He asks if I heard of the accident on the Central Railroad, and I say, " Yes." Then he asks me how it was, and I tell him, "I don't know; didn't read it." He wants to know what I think of Hayes, and I say, " I think he made a very good constable." " Constable?" he says; "I mean President Hayes." I say I thought he meant Dennis Hays, of Peoria. Then he asks if I "am going far?" I say, "No." " How far?" he asks. " Fourteen hundred miles," I say, unblushingly. He thinks that is what he would call " far," and I make no response. Two babies in the car are rehearsing a little, and in rather faulty time, but with fine expression. And the man, with one or two "dashes," asks if it doesn't bother me to write with a lot of "brats squalling around ? " I looked up at him very severely, for it always makes me angry to hear a man call a baby a " brat," and I say to him, in a slow, impressive manner, that " I would rather listen to a baby cry than hear a man swear." This eminently proper and highly moral rebuke has its effect. The man forsakes me, and he is now wreaking a cheap, miserable revenge on the smiling passengers by whistling "My Grand- father's Clock," accompanying himself by drumming on the window with his fingers. nfflr >il 592 MAJiK «' We shall havi dinner," said B was giving the o " Nine miles. '* O, then we she added. " tr going round the " No," said 1 without his k; Everybody go do you ?" "■ I had a the driver two hunil You'd 'a way shi nowTi t.. bel, of a will ft : ci:c - Jc*c« \\j sat down > k," she said. .rcred. '* I am much i • to my duty." uLularly for the two hm •d to the barouche. " It wa . ^ . t ant the one-horse carriage. ^giK K> (^^ pnoked me." :^ TOO (jple «rr quarreled before on i 1 iibel, as they drove gayly out of thi 1 can'conceive of it! I suppose, if this w ^jrr^ nc ' dd belive it." \'v\ ooboi-i; - ' I," said Isabel, musingly ; and she > _. .Misf\ «* I wh you would tell me just what you the . ,t. n you feel as you did when our little i- n off, Ion ago ? Did you hate me ? " most colially ; but not half so much as I despi li the ne.xt mnent. As to its being like a lover's quar ^ Hasn't It was lore bitter ; so much more love than love give had to beaken back. Besides, it had no dignity, an I 9 tnight h... tier what we said Basil, wh . joy the quarrt' .;i iti- ..., I's behave as if it had never ha i we can't. To mc, it's as if ui lad ju;> 592 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR^ THEIR FIRST QUARREL. BY W. D. HOWELLS. '< We shall have time for the drive round the mountain before dinner," said Basil, as they got into their carriage again ; and he was giving the order to the driver, when Isabel asked how far it was. "Nine miles." " O, then we can't think of going with one horse. You know," she added, " that we always intended to have two horses for going round the mountain." ** No," said Basil, not yet used to having his decisions reached without his knowledge. " And I don't see why we should. Everybody goes with one. You don't suppose we're too heavy, do you ?" ** I had a party from the States, ma'am," yesterday," interposed the driver ; " two ladies, real heavy ones, two gentlemen, weighin' two hundred apiece, and a stout young man on the box with me. You'd 'a' thought the horse was drawin' an empty carriage, the way she darted along." " Then his horse must be perfectly worn out to-day," said Isa- bel, refusing to admit the poor fellow directly even to the honors of a defeat. He had proved too much, and was put out of court with nc hope of repairing his error. " Why, it seems a pity," whispered Basil, dispassionately, " to turn this man adrift, when he had a reasonable hope of being with us all day, and has been so civil and obliging." "O, yes, Basil, sentimentalize him; do ! Why don't you senti- mentalize his helpless, overworked horse ? — all in a reek of per- spiration." " Perspiration ! Why, my dear, it's the rain !" " Well, rain or shine, darling, I don't want to go round the mountain with one horse ; and it's very unkind of you to insist now, when you've tacitly promised me all along to take two." '• Now, this is a little too much, Isabel. You know we never mentioned the matter till this moment." "It's the same as a promise, your not saying you wouldn't. But I don't ask you to keep your word. / don't want to go round the mountain. I'd much rather go to the hotel. I'm tired." THEIR FIRST QUARREL. 593 " Vei-y well, then, Isabel, I'll leave you at the hotel." In a moment it had come, the first serious dispute of their wedded life. It had come as all such calamities come — from nothing; and it was on them in full disaster ere they knew. Such a very little while ago, there in the convent garden, their lives had been dravrn closer in sympathy than ever before ; and now that blessed time seemed ages since, and they were further asunder than those who have never been friends. "I thought," bitterly mused Isa- bel, " that he v/ould have done anything for me!' "Who would have dreamed that a woman of her sense would be so unreasonable !" he wondered. Both had tempers, as I know my dearest reader has (if a lady), and neither would yield; and so, presently, they could hardly tell how, for they were aghast at it all, Isabel was alone in her room amidst the ruins of her life, and Basil alone in the one-horse carriage, trying to drive away from the wreck of his happiness. All was over ; the dream was past ; the charm was broken. The sweetness of their love was turned to gall ; whatever had pleased them in their loving moods was loathsome now, and the things they had praised a moment before were hateful. In that baleful light, which seemed to dwell upon all they ever said or did in mutual enjoyment, how poor and stupid and empty looked their wedding-journey ! Basil THEIR FIRST QUARREL. 594 ATARA' TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. spent five minutes in arraigning his wife and convicting her of every folly and fault. His soul was in a whirl: "For to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain." In the midst of h-s "bitter and furious upbraidings he found him- self suddenly become her ardent advocate, and ready to denounce her judge as a heartless monster. ''On our wedding journey, too ! Good heavens, what an incredible brute I am !" Then he said, " What an ass I am !" And the pathos of the case having yielded to its absurdity, he was helpless. In five minutes more he was at Isabel's side, the one-horse carriage driver dismissed, with a handsome /<7/^r-^^/;r, and a pair of lusty bays with a glit- tering barouche waiting at the door below. He swiftly accounted for his presence, which she seemed to find the most natural thing that could be, and she met his surrender with the openness of a heart that forgives but does not forget, if indeed the most gracious art is the only one unknown to the sex. She rose with a smile from the ruins of her life, amidst which she had heart-brokenly sat down with all her things on. " I knew you'd come back," she said. " So did I," he answered. " I am much too good and noble to sacrifice my preference to my duty." *' I didn't care particularly for the two horses, Basil," she said, as they descended to the barouche. " It was your refusing them that hurt me." " And I didn't want the one-horse carriage. It was your insisting so that provoked me." <' Do you think people aier quarreled before on a wedding journey ? " asked Isabel, as they drove gayly out of the city. "Never! I can't conceive of it! I suppose, if this were writ- ten down, nobody would belive it." *' No, nobody could," said Isabel, musingly ; and she added, after a pause, "I wish you would tell me just what you thought of me, dearest. Did you feel as you did when our little affair was broken off, long ago ? Did you hate me ? " "I did, most cordially; but not half so much as I despised myself the next moment. As to its being like a lover's quarrel, it wasn't. It was more bitter ; so much more love than lovers ever give had to be taken back. Besides, it had no dignity, and RAIL WA Y VOLAPUK. 59; If mi wife waz one ov these kind ov neatnesses, I would love her more than ever, for i do luv the different kinds ov neatness ; but i think we would keep house by traveling round awl the time, and not stay but on^ night in a place, and i don't think she would undertake tew skrub up the whole ov the United States ov Amerika. RAILWAY VOLAPUK. BY R. J. BURDETTE. To him who, in the love of nature, holds communion with the railway trains, she speaks in various languages. Sometimes she speaks through the conductor, and says, briefly : " Tix ! " or, " Fare ! " Sometimes the train butcher interprets for her, and then she talks of books that nobody reads ; and fruit that no- body eats ; and things that nobody buys. Sometimes, again, the brakeman interprets, and then she voices her thoughts in a weird, mysterious patois, that sounds like something you never heard ; and you learn, when it is miles too late, that <' Kyordltpnnn ! Chair car fp Bdroomfid ! " meant, " Carrollton ! Change cars for Bradford ! " Again, she employs the hackman at the station, and he roars : " 'Bus forrup tov/n ! Going ritup ! Hack ? Kaval- lack ? kavahack ? kavahack ? 'Bus for Thamerica Nouse ! Mer- chant Sotel ! This sway for the Planter Souse ! " And still again, the passengers hold converse with you, and one man asks you " Whyn't you gone to stop off at Enver ? " which you under- stand to mean, '' Why, are you not going to stop off at Denver ? " And yet another begins his narrative : " Devtell you 'bout the time," etc., which, by interpretation is : "Did I ever tell you," etc. And so, the way of the traveler is Polyglot. 598 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. SIMON SUGGS GETS A "SOFT SNAP" ON HIS DADDY. BY JOHNSON J. HQOPER. *TOHNSON J. HOOPER, prominent among the early Southern humorists, was born in North Carolina in 1815. He early removed to Alabama, studied law, became judge, and in 1861 -was Secretary of the Provisional Con- federate Congress. He died in 1863, The shifty Captain Suggs is a miracle of shrewdness. He possesses, in an eminent degree, that tact which enables man to detect the soft spots in his fellow, and to assimilate himself to whatever company he may fall in with. Besides, he has a quick, ready wit, which has extricated him from many an unpleasant predicament, and which makes him, whenever he chooses to be so — and that is always — very companionable. In short, nature gave the Captain the precise intellectual outfit most to be desired by a man of his propensities. She sent him into the world a sort of he-Pallas, ready to cope with his kind, from his infancy, in all the arts by which men ''get along'' in the world ; if she made him, in respect to his moral conformation, a beast of prey, she did not refine the cruelty by denying him the fangs and the claws. But it is high time we were beginning to record some of those specimens of the worthy Captain's ingenuity, which entitle him to the epithet "■ Shifty." We shall therefore relate the earliest characteristic anecdote which we have been able to obtain ; and we present it to our readers with assurance that it has come to our knowledge in such a way as to leave upon our mind not "a shadow of doubt" of its perfect genuineness. It will serve, if no other purpose, at least to illustrate the precocious develop- ment of Captain Suggs's peculiar talent. Until Simon entered his seventeenth year, he lived with his father, an old " hard-shell " Baptist preacher ; who, though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious. The old man reared his boys — or endeavored to do so — according to the strictist requisitions of the moral law. But he lived, at the time to which we refer, in middle Georgia, which was then newly settled ; and Simon, whose wits, from the time he was a " shirt- tail boy," were always too sharp for his father's, contrived to SIMON SUGGS-' S "SOFT SNAP.'' 599 contract all the coarse vices incident to such a region. He stole his mother's roosters to fight them at Bob Smith's grocery, and his father's plough -horses to enter them in "quarter' matches at the same place. He pitched dollars with Bob Smith himself, and could ''beat him into doll rags " whenever it came to a measurement. To crown his accomplishments, Simon was tip-top at the game of " old sledge," which was the fashion- able game of that era; and was early initiated in the mysteries of " stocking the papers." The vicious habits of Simon were, of course, a sore trouble to his father. Elder Jedediah. He reasoned, he counselled, he re- monstrated, and he lashed — but Simon was an incorrigible, irre- claimable devil. One day the simple-minded old man returned rather unexpectedly to the field / J where he had left Simon, and r /^^ Ben, and a negro boy named ^^'^ Bill, at work. Ben was still fol- lowing his plough, but Simon and Bill were in a fence corner very earnestly engaged at ** seven up." Of course the game was instantly suspended as soon as they spied the old man sixty or seventy yards off, striding towards them. It was evidently a "gone case " with Simon and Bill; but our hero determined to make the best of it. Putting the cards into one pocket, he coolly picked up the small coins which constituted the stake, and fob- SIMON SUGGS. 6oo MARK TWAIN'S LIBJiARY OF HUMOR. bed them in the other, remarking, " Well, Bill, this game's blocked, we'd as well quit." "But, Mass Simon," remarked the boy, "half dat money's mine. Ain't you gwine to lemme hab 'em ? " " Oh, never mind the money. Bill ; the old man's going to take the bark off both of us — and besides, with the hand I helt when we quit, I should 'a' beat you and won it all, any way." "Well, but Mass Simon, we nebber finish de game, and de rule—" "Go to an orful h — 1 with your rule," said the impatient SIMON RACING. Simon — " don't you see daddy's right down upon us, with an armful of hickories ? I tell you I helt nothin' but trumps, and could 'a' beat the horns off of a billygoat. Don't that satisfy you? Somehow or another you're d d hard to please!" About this time a thought struck Simon, and in a low tone — for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand — he continued, " But maybe daddy don't know, 7-ight datum sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie — 'twon't hurt, no way — let's tell him we've been playin' mumble-peg." Bill was perforce compelled to submit to this inequitable adjust- ment of his claim to a share of the stakes ; and of course SIMON SUGGS' S "SOFT SNAP.'' 60I agreed to swear to the game of mumble-peg. All this was set- tled and a peg driven into the ground, slyly and hurriedly, between Simon's legs as he sat on the ground, just as the old man reached the spot. He carried under his left arm, several neatly trimmed sprouts of formiidable length, while in his left hand he held one which he was intently engaged in divesting of its superfluous twigs. "Soho, youngsters! — yoii in the fence corner, and the crap in the grass ; what saith the Scriptur', Simon ? ' Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yeath have you and that nigger been a-doin' ? " Bill shook with fear, but Simon was cool as a cucumber, and answered his father to the effect that they had been wasting a little time in the game of mumble-peg. " Mumble-peg! mumble-peg! " repeated old Mr. Suggs; "what's that?" Simon explained the process of rooting for the peg ; how the operator got upon his knees, keeping his arms stiff by his sides, leaned forward, and extracted the peg with his teeth. " So you git upon your knees, do you, to pull up that nasty little stick? you'd better git upon 'em to ask mercy for your sin- ful souls and for a dyin' world ! But let's see one o' you git it up now." The first impulse of our hero was to volunteer to gratify the curiosity of his worthy sire; but a glance at the old man's coun- tenance changed his " notion," and he remarked that " Bill was a long ways the best hand." Bill, who did not deem Simon's modesty an omen very favorable to himself, was inclined to recip- rocate compliments with his young master ; but a gesture of impatience from the old man sent him instantly upon his knees ; and, bending forward, he essayed to lay hold with his teeth of the peg, which Simon, just at that moment, very wickedly pushed a half inch further down. Just as the breeches and hide of the boy were stretched to the uttermost, old Mr. Suggs brought down his longest hickory, with both hands, upon the precise spot where the tension was greatest. With a loud yell, Bill plunged forward, upsetting Simon, and rolled in the grass ; rubbing the castigated part with fearful energy. Simon, though overthrown, was unhurt ; and he was mentally complimenting himself upon the sagacity which had prevented his illustrating the game of 602 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. mumble-peg for the paternal amusement, when his attention was arrested by the old man's stooping to pick up something — what is it ? — a card upon which Simon had been sitting, and which, therefore, had not gone with the rest of the pack into his pocket. The simple Mr, Suggs had only a vague idea of the pasteboard abomination called cards ; and though he decidedly inclined to " what's this, SIMON ? the opinion that this was one, he was by no means certain of the fact. Had Simon known this he would certainly have escaped ; but he did not. His father, assuming the look of extreme sapiency which is always worn by the interrogator who does not desire or expect to increase his knowledge by his questions, asked: " What's this, Simon 1 " SIMON SUGGS' S " SOFT SNAP." 603 " The Jack-a-dimunts," promptly responded Simon, who gave up all as lost after this faux pas. " What was it doin' down thar, Simon, my sonny ? " continued Mr. Suggs, in an ironically affectionate tone of voice. " I had it under my leg, thar, to make it on Bill, the first time It come trumps," was the ready reply. "What's trumps?" asked Mr. Suggs, with a view of arriving at the import of the word. " Nothin' ain't trumps twiu" said Simon, who misapprehended his father's meaning ; "but chibs was, when you come along and busted up the game." A part of this answer was Greek to the Reverend Mr. Suggs^ but a portion of it was full of meaning. They had, then, most unquestionably, been "throwing" cards, the scoundrels! the "audacious" little heJlions! "To the 'mulberry' with both on ye, in a hurry," said the old man sternly. But the lads were not disposed to be in a " hurry," for " the mulberry " was the scene of all formal punish- ment administered during work hours in the field. Simon fol- lowed his father, however, but made, as he went along, all man- ner of "faces" at the old man's back; gesticulated as if he were going to strike him between the shoulders with his fists, and kicking at him so as almost to touch his coat-tail with his shoe. Inthis style they walked on to the mulberry-tree, in whose shade Simon's brother Ben was resting. It must not be supposed that, during the walk to the place of punishment, Simon's mind was either inactive, or engaged in suggesting the grimaces and contortions wherewith he was pan- tomimically expressing his irreverent sentiments toward his father. Far from it. The movements of his limbs and features were the mere workings of habit — the self-grinding of the cor- poreal machine — for which his reasoning half was only remotely responsible. For while Simon's person was thus, on its ov/n account, " making game " of old Jed'diah, his wits, in view of the anticipated flogging, were dashing, springing, bounding, dart- ing about, in hot chase of some expedient suitable to the neces- sities of the case ; much after the manner in which puss — when Betty, armed with the broom, and hotly seeking vengeance for pantry robbed or bed disturbed, has closed upon her the garret doors and windows— attempts all sorts of impossible exits, to 6o4 MARK TIVALV'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. come down at last in the corner, with panting side and glaring eye, exhausted and defenseless. Our unfortunate hero could devise nothing by which he could reasonably expect to escape the heavy blows of his father. Having arrived at this conclusion and the "mulberry " about the same time, he stood with a dogged look awaiting the issue. The old man Suggs made no remark to any one while he was seizing up Bill — a process which, though by no means novel to Simon, seemed to excite in him a sort of painful interest. He watched it closely, as if endeavoring to learn the precise fashion of his father's knot ; and when at last Bill was swung up a-tiptoe to a limb, and the whipping commenced, Simon's eye followed every movement of his father's arm; and as each blow descended upon the bare shoulders of his sable friend, his own body writhed and "wriggled " in involuntar)' sympathy. " It's the devil — it's hell," said Simon to himself, " to take such a walloppin' as that. Why, the old man looks like he wants to git to the holler, if he could — rot his old picter ! It's wuth, at the least, fifty cents — je-e-miny how that hurt I — yes, it's wuth three- quarters of a dollar to take that 'ere lickin' ! Wonder if I'm " predestinated," as old Jed'diah says, to git the feller to it ? Lord, how daddy blows ! I do wish to he'd bust wide open, the durned old deer-face ! If 'twa'n't for Ben helpin' him, I b'lieve I'd give the old dog a tussel when it comes to my turn. It couldn't make the thing no wuss, if it didn't make it no better. 'D rot it ! what do boys have daddies for, any how? 'Tain't for nuthin' but to beat 'em and work 'em. There's some use in mammies — I kin poke my finger right in the old 'oman'seye, and keep it thar, and if I say it aint thar, she'll say so too. I wish she was here to hold daddy off. If 'twa'n't so fur, I'd holler for her, any how. How she would cling to the old fellow's coat-tail ! " Mr. Jedediah Suggs let down Bill and untied him. Approach- ing Simon, whose coat was off, " Come, Simon, son," said he, *' cross them hands ; I'm gwine to correct you." " It aint no use, daddy," said Sim.on. " Why so, Simon ?" " Jist bekase it ain't. I'm gwine to play cards as long as I live. When I go off to myself, I'm gwine to make my livin' by it. So what's the use of beatin' me about it?" SIMO.V sua GS'S " SOFT S.VAF. " 60 1? Old Mr. Suggs groaned, as he was wont to do in the pulpit, at this display of Simon's viciousness. "Simon," said he, "you're a poor ignunt creetur. You don't know nuthin', and you've never bin no whars. If I was to turn you off, you'd starve in a week — " " I wish you'd try me," said Simon, ''and jist see. I'd win more money in a week than you can make in a year. There ain't nobody round here kin make seed corn off o' me at cards. I'm rale smart," he added with great emphasis. " Simon ! Simon ! you poor unlettered fool. Don't you know that all card-players, and chicken-fighters and horse-racers go to hell ? You cracked-brained creetur you ! And don't you know that them that plays cards always loses their money, and — " "Who win's it all, then, daddy?" asked Simon. " Shet your mouth, you imperdent, slack-jawed dog. Your daddy's a-tryin' to give you some good advice, and youa-pickin' up his words that way. I knowed a young man once, when I lived in Ogletharp, as went down to Augusty and sold a hundred dollars worth of cotton for his daddy, and some o' them gam- boUers got him to drinkin', and the very first night he was with 'em they got every cent of his money." "They couldn't get my money in a iveek,'' said Simon. " Any body can git these here green fellers' money ; them's the sort I'm a-gwine to watch for myself. Here's what kin fix the papers jist about as nice as anybody." "Well, it's no use to argify about the matter," said old Jed'- diah; " What saith the Scriptur'! ' He that begetteth a fool, doeth it to his sorrow.' Hence, Simon, you're a poor, misubble fool — so cross your hands !" You'd jist as well not, daddy ; I tell you I'm gwine to follow playin' cards for a livin', and what's the use o' bangin' a feller about it ? I'm as smart as any of 'em, and Bob Smith says them Augusty fellers can't make rent off o' ine." The Reverend Mr. Suggs had once in his life gone to Augusta; an extent of travel which in those days was a little unusual. His consideration among his neighbors was considerably increased by the circumstance, as he had all the benefit of the popular infer- ence, that no man could visit the city of Augusta without acquir- ing a vast superiority over all his untraveled neighbors, in every department of human knowledge. Mr. Suggs, then, very natu- 6o6 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. rally felt ineffably indignant that an individual who had never seen any collection of human habitations larger than a log-house village — an individual, in short, no other or better than Bob Smith — should venture to express an opinion concerning the man- ners, customs, or anything else appertaining to, or in any wise connected with, the ultima Thide of backwoods Georgians. There were two propositions which witnessed their own truth to the mind of Mr. Suggs — the one was, that a man who had never been at Augusta could not know any thing about that city, or any place, or any thing else ; the other, that one who had been there must, of necessity, not only be well informed as to all things connected with the city itself, but perfectly an fait upon all subjects whatsoever. It was, therefore, in a tone of mingled indignation and contempt that he replied to the last remark of Simon. •' Bob Smith says, does he ? And who's Bob Smith? Much does Bob Smith know about Augusty ! he's been thar, I reckon ! Slipped off yerly some mornin', when nobody warn't noticm', and got back afore night ! It's only a hundred and fifty mile. Oh, yes, Bob Smith knows all about it ! /don't know nothin' about it ! / a'n't never been to Augusty — / couldn't find the road thar, I reckon— ha ! ha ! Bob—Smi-th ! The eternal stink ! if "he was only to see one o' them fine gentlemen in Augusty, with "his fine broad-cloth, and bell-crown hat, and shoe-boots a-shinin' like silver, he'd take to the woods and kill himself a-runnin'. Bob Smith ! that's whar all your devilment comes from, Simon." "Bob Smith's as good as anybody else, I judge; and a heap smarter than some. He showed me how to cut Jack," continued Simon, "and that's more nor some people can do, if they have been to Augusty." " If Bob Smith kin do it," said the old man, " I kin, too. I don't know it by that name; but if it's book knowledge or plain sense, and Bob kin do it, it's reasonable to s'pose that old Jed'- 'diah Suggs won't be bothered bad. Is it any ways similyar to the rule of three, Simon ? " "Pretty much, daddy, but not adzactly," said Simon, drawings a pack from his pocket, to explain. " Now daddy," he proceeded, " you see these here four cards is what we calls the Jacks. Well, now the idee is, if you'll take the pack and mix 'em all up SIMON SUGGS' S ''SOFT SNAP:' 607 together, I'll take off a passel from top, and the bottom one of them I take off will be one of the Jacks." "Me to mix 'em fust?" said old Jed'diah. "Yes." " And you not to see but the back of the top one, when you go to 'cut,' as you call it ?" " Jist so. daddy." "And the backs all jist as like as can be?" said the senior Suggs, examining the cards. " More alike nor cow-peas," said Simon. "It can't be done, Simon," observed the old man,' with great solemnity. " Bob Smith kin do it, and so kin I." " It's agin nater, Simon; thar a'n't a man in Augusty, nor on top of the yeath that kin do it ! " "Daddy," said our hero, " ef you'll bet me — " "What!" thundered old Mr. Suggs. ''Bet, did you say?" and he came down with a scorer across Simon's shoulders — " me, Jed'diah Suggs, that's been in the Lord's sarvice these twenty years — uic bet, you nasty, sassy, triflin' ugly — " "I didn't goto say that, daddy; that warn't what I meant adzactly. I went to say that ef you'd let me off from this here maulin' j^ou owe me, and give me * Bunch,' ef I cut Jack, V^Lgive you all this here silver, ef I didn't — that's all. To be sure, I allers knowed_y^« wouldn't bet." Old Mr. Suggs ascertained the exact amount of the silver which his son handed him, in an old leathern pouch, for inspec- tion. He also, mentally, compared that sum with an imaginary one, the supposed value of a certain Indian pony, called " Bunch," which he had bought for his " old woman's " Sunday riding, and which had sent the old lady into a fence corner, the first and only time she ever mounted him. As he weighed the pouch of silver in his hand, Mr. Suggs also endeavored to analyze the character of the transaction proposed by Simon. "It sartinly cant be Tiothin' but givin, no way it kin be twisted," he murmured to himself. "I kno7u he can't do it, so there's no resk. What makes bettin' ? The resk. It's a one-sided business, and I'll jist let him give me all his money, and that'll put all his wild sportin' notions out of his head." <'Will you stand it, daddy?" asked Simon, by way of waking 6o8 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. ^,he old man up, " You mought as well, for the whippin' won't Jo you no good, and as for Bunch, nobody about the plantation A^on't ride him but me." "Simon," replied the old man, "1 agree to it. Your old daddy ►s in a close place about payin' for his land; and this here money it's jist eleven dollars, lacking of twenty-five cents — will help out mightily. But mind, Simon, ef anything's said about this, herearter, remember, you give me the money." " Very well, daddy; and ef the thing works up instid o' down, I s'pose we'll say you give me Bunch — eh?" " You won't never be troubled to tell how you come by Bunch; the thing's agin nater, and can't be done. What old Jed'dian Suggs knows, he knows as good as anybody. Give me them fix- ments, Simon." Our hero handed the cards to his father, who, dropping the plough-line with which he had intended to tie Simon's hands, turned his back to that individual, in order to prevent his witness- ing the operation of mixing. He then sat down, and very leis- urely commenced shuffling the cards, making, however, an exceedingly awkward job of it. Restive kings and queens jumped from his hands, or obstinately refused to slide into the company of the rest of the pack. Occasionally a sprightly knave would insist on facing his neighbor; or, pressing his edge against anoth- er's, half double himself up, and then skip away. But Elder Jed'diah perseveringly continued his attempts to subdue the refractory, while heavy drops burst from his forehead, and ran down his cheeks. All of a sudden an idea, quick and penetrat- ing as a rifle-ball, seemed to have entered the cranium of the old man. He chuckled audibly. The devil had suggested to Mr. Suggs an impromptu " stock," which would place the chances of Simon, already sufficiently slim, in the old man's opinion, without the range of possibility. Mr. Suggs forthwith proceeded to cull out all iho. pic fer ones, so as to be certain to include the Jacks, and place them at the bottom, with the evident intention of keeping Simon's fingers above these when he should cut. Our hero, who was quietly looking over his father's shoulders all the time, did not seem alarmed by this disposition of the cards; on the contrary, he smiled as if he felt perfectly confident of success, in spite of it. "Now, daddy," said Simon, when his father had announced SIMON SUGGS' S "SOFT SNAP." 609 himself ready, " narry one of us ain't got to look at the cards while I'm a cuttin'; if we do it'll spile the conjuration." "Very well." "And another thing — you've got to look me right dead in the eye, daddy — will you ? " "To be sure— to be sure," said Mr. Suggs; "fire awayl" Simon walked up close to his father, and placed his hand on the pack. Old Mr. Suggs looked in Siinon's eye, and Simon returned the look fur about three seconds, during which a close observer might have detected a suspicious working of the wrist of the hand on the cards, but the elder Suggs did not remark it. "Wake, snakes ! day's a-breakin' ! Rise, Jack ! " said Simon, cutting half a dozen cards from the top of the pack, and pre- senting the face of the bottom one for the inspection of his father. It was the Jack of hearts. Old Mr. Suggs staggered back several steps with uplifted eyes and hands ! " Marciful master !" he exclaimed, '^ to 10 00 B. Vertical Shaft, 5 00 D. H. Projecting arms, 5° M. Mouse, .-.,..,«... 121-^ Total cost of Machine and Attachment, .... $90 62)^ 6 ^S MARK TWA IN' S LIBRAE Y OF HUMOR, FABLES. The Merchant of Venice, by g. t. lanigan. A Venetian merchant, who was lolling in the lap of Luxury, was accosted upon the Rialto by a Friend who had not seen him for many months. " How is this ?" cried the latter; "when I last saw you your Gaberdine was out at elbows, and now you sail in your own Gondola !" True," replied the Merchant, ''but since then I have met with serious losses, and been obliged to compound with my Creditors for ten Cents on the Dollar. Moral. — Composition is the Life of Trade. The Good Samaritan. BY G. T. LANIGAN. A CERTAIN Man went from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among Thieves, who beat him and stripped him and left him for dead. A Good Samaritan, seeing this, clapped Spurs to his Ass and galloped away, lest he should be sent to the House of Deten- tion as a Witness, while the Robbers were released on Bail. Moral. — The Perceiver is worse than the Thief. Preaching v. Practice. BY R. J. BURDETTE. A Sea Cliff, L. I., audience was dreadfully shocked last Sun- day night. Just as a local temperance leader was about to begin his address, he leaned too closely over the candle and his breath caught fire. He afterwards explained, however, that he had been using camphor for the toothache. The amendment was accepted, and the talk went on. THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS. 679 THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS. BY BRET HARTE. I RESIDE at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James; I am not up to small deceit, or any sinful games; And I'll tell in simple language what I know about ttie row That broke up our society upon the Stanislow. But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man, And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim. To lay for that same member for to " put a head " on him. "Now nothing could be finer, or more beautiful to see. Than the first six months' proceedings of that same society Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones That he found within a tunnel, near the tenement of Jones. Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed tnere, From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare; And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules, Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules. Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault. It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault: He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown, And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town. Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent To say another is an ass — at least, to all intent Nor should the individual who happens to be meant Reply by heaving rocks at him to any great extent. Then Abner Deal, of Angel's, raisec! a point of order — when A chunk of olc? red sandstone took him in the abdomen. And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more. 68o MAEK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage In a warfare with the remnants of a paleozoic age; And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin, Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in. BROWN. And this is all I have to say of these improper games, For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James, And I've told, in simple language, what I know about the row That broke up our society upon the Stainislow. WRAT HE WANTED IT FOR. 681 WHAT HE WANTED IT FOR. BY J. M. BAILEY. Those who attenaed the sale of animals from Barnum's hippo- drome in Bridgeport, the other day, report the following occur- rence. A tiger was being offered. The bid run up to forty-five hundred dollars. This was made by a man who was a stranger, and to him it was knocked down. Barnum, who had been eyeing the stranger uneasily during the bidding, now went up to him, and said: " Pardon me for asking the question; but will you tell me where you are from?"" " Down South a bit," re- sponded the man. " Are you connected with any show?" "No." "And are you buying this animal for yourself ? " *' Yes."' Barnum shifted about un- easily for a moment, looking alternately at the man and the tiger, and evidently trying his best to reconcile t fi e two together. "Now, young man," he finally said, "you need not take this animal unless you want to; for there are those here who will take it off your hands." " I don't want to sell," was the quiet reply. Then Barnum said, in his desperation: " What on earth are you going to do with such an ugly beast, if you have no show of your own, and are not buying for some one who is a showman ? " " Well, I'll tell you," said the purchaser. " My wife died about three weeks ago. We had lived together for ten years, and — and I miss her." He paused to wipe his eyes, and steady his voice, and then added: "So I've bought this tiger." "I understand you," said the great showman in a husky voice. A WIFELY SUBSTITUTE, 682 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. ANTS, ETC. BY JOSH BILLINGS. Ants are older than Adam. Man {^for very wise reasons) want bilt untill all other things were finished, and pronounced good. If man had bin made fust he would hav insisted upon bossing the rest of the job. ANTS. He probably would hav objekted to having enny little bizzy aunts at all, and various other objekshuns would have bin offered, equally green. I am glad that man waz the last thing made. If man hadn't hav bin made at all, you would never hav heard me find enny fault about it. THE ROMANCE OF THE CARPET. 683 THE ROMANCE OF THE CARPET. BY R. J. BURDETTE. Basking in peace in the warm spring sun, South Hill smiled upon Burlington. The breath of May! and the day was fair, And the bright motes danced in the balmy air. And the sunlight gleamed where the restless breeze •■•Cissed the fragrant blooms on the apple-trees. His beardless cheek with a smile was spanned, As he stood with a carriage whip in his hand. And he laughed as he doffed his bobtail coat, And the echoing folds of the carpet smote. And she smiled as she leaned on her busy mop, And said she'd tell him when to stop. So he pounded away till the dinner-bell Gave him a little breathing spell. But he sighed when the kitchen clock struck one. And she said the carpet wasn't done. But he lovingly put in his biggest licks, And he pounded like mad till the clock struck six. And she said, in a dubious kind of way, That she guessed he could finish it up next day. Then all that day, and the next day, too. That fuzz from the dirtless carpet flew. And she'd give it a look at eventide, And say, " Npw beat on the other side." And the new days came as the old days went, And the landlord came for his regular rent. 684 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. And the neighbors laughed at the tireless broom, And his face was shadowed with clouds of gloom. Till at last, one cheerless winter day, He kicked at the carpet and slid away. Over the fence and down the street, Speeding away with footsteps fleet. And never again the morning sun Smiled on him beating his carpet-drum. And South Hill often said with a yawn, "Where's the carpet-martyr gone?" Years twice twenty had come and passed And the carpet swayed in the autumn blast. For never yet, since that bright spring-time, Had it ever been taken down from the line. Over the fence a gray-haired man Cautiously dim, dome, clem, clum, clamb. He found him a stick in the old woodpile. And he gathered it up with a sad, grim smile. A flush passed over his face forlorn As he gazed at the carpet, tattered and torn. And he hit it a most resounding thwack, Till the startled air gave his echoes back. And out of the window a white face leaned, And a palsied hand the pale face screened. She knew his face; she gasped, and sighed, "A little more on the other side." THE ROMANCE OF THE CARPET. 685 " A LITTLE MORE ON THE OTHER SIDE." Right down on the ground his stick he throwed, And he shivered and said, " Well, I am blowed !" And he turned away, with a heart full sore, And he never was seen not more, not more. 686 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. MR. SIMPKINS'S DOWNFALL. BY W. L. ALDEN. Man is the only animal that wears short socks. This is not only a more accurate definition than any hitherto devised by scientific persons, but it shows the inferiority of jnan to all other animals, and ought to have even more effect in humbling our wicked pride than has the famous story of the little girl who was excessively proud of her silk dress until she was told that it was spun, woven, cut out, made up, and trimmed by a loathsome worm. The great trouble with the short sock is, that it will not keep its place. There being nothing whatever to hold it, the force of gravitation necessarily drags it down about the ankle. This causes an amount of misery which is appalling. There is no man who can feel any confidence in his socks. Whether he is walk- ing or sitting, he knows that his socks are slowly but surely slip- ping down. Garters being out of the question, since the shortness of the sock does not permit a garter to be placed in a position where it will not slip, there is absolutely no remedy for what we may fairly call the giant evil of the age. Pins and mucilage have both been tried by desperate men, but they have proved useless, and have merely added to the misery of the user. In these cir- cumstances there is nothing left for man to do except to bear the sock in silence, or to boldly cast it aside and adopt the full- grown stocking. The latter alternative was recently chosen by that eloquent but unfortunate clergyman. Rev. Charles Simpkins, of Westbridge, Pennsylvania. Previous to the catastrophe which lately overtook him, the Church did not possess a more popular and promising young clergyman. He could repeat the opening exhortation all the way from " Dearly beloved " to " forgiveness for the same," without once pausing for breath; and it has been asserted that he could monotone the entire Apostles' Creed while breathing only three times. As he was unmarried, and not yet twenty-seven years old, he was regarded with peculiar reverence by the unmar- ried ladies of his parish, and he received more annual slippers than any other clergyman in the United States. MR. SIMPKINS'S DOWNFALL. 687 Neatness was one of the distinguishing characteristics of Mr. Simplcins, and there are probably few men who have suffered more keenly from short socles. When walking through the vil- lage, he was in continual dread lest his socks should descend into public view, and even while preaching his most eloquent ser- mons, the perspiration would gather on his brow as he felt that one of his socks was gradually slipping down. This wore upon him to that extent that his massive intellect threatened to totter, and on the morning of the eighty-first Sunday after Trinity, he deliberately paused, after remarking " here endeth " — and stooped down to repair damages. That night he resolved that vigorous measures must be taken, and he accordingly wrote a confiden- tial letter to his sister's husband, who resided in this city, and inclosed the necessary measurements. Shortly afterward he received, ostensibly from the husband, but really from the aftec- tionate sister, two dozen pair of Balbriggan hose, together with a pair of scarlet elastics an inch in width, and of precisely the right size. As soon as Mr. Simpkins had learned, by repeated experiment, how to wear the scarlet appliances, his spirits began to rise. He was no longer a prey to doubt and despair. His stockings firmly kept their place, and he felt that he could even attend a church picnic and climb over a fence without fear of consequences. Accordingly, for the first time during his residence at West- bridge, he consented to attend the Sunday-school picnic of the 2ist of October last, and thereby filled with unutterable delight the souls of all the unmarried teachers of the church. Mr. Simpkins, being free from care, entered into the sports of the picnic with great zest, and the children insisted that he, together with their teachers, should take part in a game of blind- man's buff. The request was acceded to, and the usual run- ning, laughing and shrieking followed. It was while Mr. Sunpkins was fleeing, in company with six excited teachers, from the pur- suit of a blindfolded small boy, that he suddenly noticed that one of his elastics had become unclasped, and had fallen to the ground. At the same moment it was perceived by the prettiest of the teachers, who made a frantic effort to seize it, but was anti- cipated by the unhappy clergyman. It was bad enough for him to know that the teacher had discovered his misfortune; but what was his horror and amazement when, with every appearance of 688 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. anger, she demanded that he should " hand her that" instantly. He was so astonished at her evident desire to make sport of him that he did not deign to answer her, but put the disputed article in his pocket and walked away. Whereupon the teacher burst into tears, and informed her confidential friends that Mr. Simp- AN ALARMING DISCOVERY. kins had had the inconceivable audacity to steal one of her — in fact, her private property. The scandal spread rapidly and widely, and grew as rapidly as it spread. At the end of half an hour every lady at the picnic had cut the clergyman in the most marked manner. Burning MR. SIMPKINS'S DOWNFALL. 68g with shame and indignation, he forgot to repair the deficiencies of his toilet, and went home feeling rather more crestfallen^than did the prophet Daniel when he found that the lions would not recognized his existence. It was not until he was on the point of seeking a sleepless pillow that he discovered that both his scarlet elastics were in their proper place, while the one which he had picked up at the picnic lay on his table. The full horror of his situation flashed upon him. The teacher had really dropped a scarlet elastic, and he had seized it under the impression that it was his own. The utter hopelessness of ever making any satisfactory explana- tion of the affair was only too apparent. Early the next morning Mr. SiMPKiNS fled from Westbridge a ruined man. The fatal articles which had caused his downfall he left behind him, and they teach with mute but powerful eloquence the lesson that we should bear the socks we have, and never dream of flying to stockings, of which we know nothing except by hearsay. 690 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRAR Y OF HUMOR. MR. RABBIT GROSSLY DECEIVES MR. FOX. BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. One evening when the little boy, whose nights with Uncle Remus are as entertaining as those Arabian ones of blessed memory, had finished supper and hurried out to sit with his ven- erable patron, he tound the old man in great glee. Indeed, Uncle Remus was talkmg and laugning to himself at such a rate that the little boy was atraid he had company. The truth is. Uncle Remus had neard the child coming, and, when the rosy- cheeked chap put his head in at the door, was engaged in a mcnologue. the burden of which seemed to be: 'O' "Ole Molly Har', Wat you coin' dar, Settin' in de cornaer Smokin' yo' seegyar? '* As a matter of course, this vague allusion reminded the little boy of the tact that the wicked Jbox was still in pursuit of the Rabbit, and he immediately put his curiosity in the shape of a question. " Uncle Remus, did the Rabbit have to go clean away when he got loose from the Tar-Baby ? ' ' " Bless grashus, honey, dat he didn't ! Who ? Him ? You dunno nuthin' 'tall 'bout Brer Rabbit ef dat's de way you puttin' 'em down. Wat he gwine 'way fer? He mouter stayed sorter close twel de pitch rub off' n his ha'r, but twern't menny days 'fo' he wuz lopin' up en down de naberhood same ez ever, en I dunno ef he wern't mo' sassier dan befo'. " Seem like dat de tale 'bout how he got mixt up wid de Tar- Baby got 'roun' 'mongst de nabers. Leas'ways, Miss Meadows en de gals got win' un' it, en de nex' time Brer Rabbit paid um a visit Miss Meadows tackled 'im 'bout it, en de gals sot up a monstus gigglement. Brer Rabbit, he sot up des ez cool ez a cowcumber, he did, en let 'em run on." " Who was Miss Meadows, Uncle Remus ? " inquired the little boy. " Don't ax me, honey. She wuz in de tale, Miss Meadows en MR. RABBIT GROSSLY DECEIVES MR. FOX. 69 1 de gals wuz, en de tale I give you like hi't war' gun ter me. Brer Rabbit, he sot dar, he did, sorter lam' like, en den bimeby he cross his legs, he did, and wink his eye slow, en up en say, sezee: " ' Ladies, Brer Fox wuz my daddy's ridin'-hoss fer thirty year; maybe mo', but thirty year dat I knows un', sezee; en den he paid um his 'specks, en tip his beaver, en march off, he did, des ez stiff en ez stuck up ez a fire-stick. <' Nex' day, Brer Fox cum a callin', and w'en he 'gun fer ter laff 'bout Brer Rabbit, Miss Meadows en de gals, dey ups en tells 'im 'bout w'at Brer Rabbit say. Den Brer Fox grit his '^ toof sho' nuff, he did, en he look mighty dumpy,' but w'en he rizl fer ter go he up en say, sezee: '"Ladies, I ain't 'sputin' w'at you say, but Fll make Brer Rabbit chaw up his words en spit um out right yer whar you kin see 'im', sezee, en wid dat off Brer Fox marcht. " En w'en he got in de big road, he shuck de dew off'n his tail, en made a straight shoot fer Brer Rabbit's house. W'en he got dar, Brer Rabbit wuz spectin' un 'im, en de do' wuz shet fas'. Brer Fox knock. Nobody ain't ans'er. Brer Fox knock. No- body ans'er. Den he knock agin — blam! blam! Den Brer Rab- bit holler out mighty weak: *' ' Is dat you. Brer Fox ? I want you ter run en fetch de doc- tor. Dat bait er pusly w'at I e't dis mawnin' is gittin' 'way wid me. Do, please, Brer Fox, run quick,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.' " ' I come after you, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. ' Dere's gwineter be a party up at Miss Meadows's,' sezee. ' All de gals '11 be dere, en I promus' dat I'd fetch you. De gals, dey 'lowed dat hit wouldn't be no party 'ceppin' I fotch you,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. " Den Brer Rabbit say he wuz too sick, en Brer Fox say he wuzzent, en dar dey had it up and down, 'sputin' en contendin'. Brer Rabbit say he can't walk. Brer Fox say he tote 'im. Brer Rabbit say how? Brer Fox Fox say in his arms. Brer Rabbit say he drap 'im. Brer Fox 'low he won't. Bimeby Brer Rabbit say he go ef Brer Fox tote 'im on his back. Brer Fox say he would. Brer Rabbit say he can't ride widout a saddle. Brer ' Fox say he git de saddle. Brer Rabbit say he can't set in saddle less he have bridle fer ter hoi' by. Brer Fox say he git de bridle. Brer Rabbit say he can't ride widout bline bridle, kaze Brer Fox be shy in' at stumps 'long de road, en fling 'im off. Brer Fox say 6<^: MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. he git bline bridle. Den Brer Rabbit say he go. Den Brer Fox say he ride Brer Rabbit mos' up ter Miss Meadows's, en den he could git down en walk de balance er de way. Brer Rabbit 'greed, en den Brer Fox lipt out atter de saddle en de bridle. << Co'se Brer Rabbit know de game dat Brer Fox wuz fixin' fer ter play, en he 'termin' fer ter outdo 'im, en by de time he koam his ha'r en twis' his mustarsh, en sorter rig up, yercome Brer Fox, saddle en bridle on, en lookin'ez peart ez a circus pony. He trot up ter de do' en stan' dar pawin' de ground en chompin' de bit same like sho 'nuff boss, en Brer Rabbit he mount, he did, en dey ^ BRER RABBIT S HORSE. amble off. Brer Fox can't see behime wid de bline bridle on, but bimeby he feel Brer Rabbit raise one er his foots. " 'Wat you doin' now, Brer Rabbit?' sezee. " ' Short'nin' de lef stir'p, Brer Fox,' sezee. " Bimeby Brer Rabbit raise up de udder foot. " ' Wat you doin' now, Brer Rabbit ? ' sezee. " * Pullin' down my pants. Brer Fox,' sezee. " All de time, bless grashus, honey, Brer Rabbit wer puttin' on his spurrers, en w'en dey got close to Miss Meadows's, whar Brer Rabbit wuz to git off, en Brer Fox made a motion fer ter stan' still. Brer Rabbit slap de spurrers inter Brer Fox's flanks, en you better b'leeve he got over de groun'. W'en dey got ter de house. Miss Meadows' en all de gals wuz settin* on de peazzer, en stid- MR. RABBIT GROSSLY DECEIVES MR. FOX. 693 der stoppin' at de gate, Brer Rabbit rid on by, he did, en den come gallopin' down de road en upter dehoss-rack, w'ich he hitch Brer Fox at, en den he santer inter de house, he did, en shaice han's wid de gals, en set dar, smolcin' his seegyar same ez a town man. Bimeby he draw in long puff, en den let hit out in a cloud, en squar hisse'f back en holler out, he did: <' ' Ladies, ain't I done tell you Brer Fox wuz de ridin'-hoss fer our fambly ? He sorter losin' his gait' now, but I speck I kin fetch 'im all right in a mont' er so,' sezee. " En den Brer Rabbit sorter grin, he did, en de gals giggle, en Miss Meadows, she praise up de pony, en dar wuz Brer Fox hitch fas' ter de rack, en couldn't he'p hisse'f." "Is that all, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy as the old man paused. " Dat ain't all, honey, but 'twon't do fer ter give out too much cloff fer ter cut one pa' r pants," replied the old man sententiously. When " Miss Sally's " little boy went to Uncle Remus the next night to hear the conclusion of the adventure in which the Rabbit made a riding-horse of the Fox, to the great enjoyment and grati- fication of Miss Meadows and the girls, he found the old man in a bad humor. " I ain't tellin' no tales ter bad chilluns," said Uncle Remus curtly. " But, Uncle Remus, I ain't bad," said the little boy plaintively. " Who dat chunkin' dem chickens dis mawnin' ? Who dat knockin' out fokes's eyes wid dat Yallerbammer sling des 'fo' dinner ? Who dat sickin' dat pinter puppy after my pig ? Who dat scatterin' my ingun sets ? Who dat flingin' rocks on top er my house, w'ich a little mo' en one un em would er drap spang on my head ? " "Well, now. Uncle Remus, I didn't go to do it. I won't do so any more. Please, Uncle Remus, if you will tell me, I'll run to the house and bring you some tea-cakes." " Seein' urn's better'n hearin' tell un um," replied the old man, the severity of his countenance relaxing somewhat; but the little boy darted out, and in a few minutes came running back with his pockets full and his hands full. " I lay yo* mammy '11 'spishun dat de rats' stummucks is wid- enin' in dis naberhood w'en she come fer ter count up 'er cakes," said Uncle Remus, with a chuckle. '* Deze," he continued, 694 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. dividing the cakes into two equal parts — " deze I'll tackle now, en deze I'll lay by fer Sunday. " Lemme see. I mos' dis'member wharbouts Brer Fox en Brer Rabbit wuz." "The rabbit rode the fox to Miss Meadows's, and hitched him to the horse-rack," said the little boy. "W'y co'se he did," said Uncle Remus. <'Co'se he did. Well, Brer Rabbit rid Brer Fox up, he did, en tied 'im to de rack, en den sot out in de peazzer wid de gals a smokin' er his seegyar wid mo' proudness dan w'at you mos' ever see. Dey talk, en dey sing, en dey play on de peaner, de gals did, twel bimeby hit come time fer Brer Rabbit fer to be gwine, en he tell um all good-by, en strut out to de hoss-rack same's ef he wuz de king er de patter-rollers,* en den he mount Brer Fox en ride off. <' Brer Fox ain't sayin' nuthin' 'tall. He des rack off, he did, en keep his mouf shet, en Brer Rabbit know'd der waz biznezz cookin' up fer him, en he feel monstns skittish. Brer Fox amble on twel he git in de long lane, outer sight er Miss Meadows's house, an den he tu'n loose, he did. He rip en he r'ar, en he cuss en he swar, he snort en he cavort." " What was he doing that for, Uncle Remus ? " the little boy inquired. " He wuz tryin' fer ter fling Brer Rabbit off'n his back, bless yo' soul ! But he des might ez well er rastle wid his own shad- der. Every time he hump hisse'f Brer Rabbit slapp de spurrers in 'im, en dar dey had it, up en down. Brer Fox fa'rly to' up de groun', he did, en he jump so high en he jump so quick dat he mighty nigh snatch his own tail off. Dey kep' on gwine on dis way twel bimeby Brer Fox lay down en roll over, he did, en dis sorter onsettle Brer Rabbit, but by de time Brer Fox got back on his footses again, Brer Rabbit wuz gwine thro de underbresh mo' samer dan a race-hoss. Brer Fox he lit out after 'im, he did, en he push Brer Rabbit so close dat it wuz 'bout all he could do fer ter git in a holler tree. Hole too little fer Brer Fox fer * Patrols. In the country districts, order was kept on the plantations at night by the knowledge that they were liable to be visited at any moment by the patrols. Hence a song current among the negroes, the choru? of which was : " Rim, nigger, run ; patter-roller ketch you— Run, nigger, run ; hit's almos' day." MR. RABBIT GROSSLY DECEIVES MR. FOX. 695 ter git n, en he hatter lay down en res' en gedder his mine tergedder. "While he wuz layin' dar, Mr. Buzzard come floppin' 'long, ea seein' Brer Fox stretch out on the groun', he lit en view de premusses. Den Mr. Buzzard sorter shake his wing, en put his head on one side, en say to hisse'f like, sezee: " ' Brer Fox dead, en I so sorry,' sezee. « ' No, I ain't dead, nudder,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. *I got ole man Rabbit pent up in yer,' sezee, ' en I'm a gwineter git 'im dis time ef it take twel Chris'mus', sezee. «' Den, atter some mo' palaver, Brer Fox make a bargain dat Mr. BRER RABBIT OUTWITS MR. BUZZARD. Buzzard wuz ter watch de hole, en keep Brer Rabbit dar wiles Brer Fox went after his axe. Den Brer Fox he lope off, he did, en Mr. Buzzard he tuck up his stan' at the hole. Bimby, w'en all git still, Brer Rabbit sorter scramble down close to der hole, he did, en holler out: '' ' Brer Fox ! Oh, Brer Fox ! ' " Brer Fox done gone, en nobody say nuthin'. Den Brer Rab- bit squall out like he wuz mad; sezee: '' 'You needn't talk less you wanter,' sezee; *I knows youer dar, en I ain't keerin',' sezee. * I des wanter tell you dat I wish mighty bad Brer Tukkey Buzzard wuz here,' sezee. 696 MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR, " Den Mr. Buzzard try ter talk like Brer Fox: <' ' Wat you want wid Mr. Buzzard ? ' sezee. " ' Oh, nuthin' in 'tickler, 'cep' dere's de fattes' gray squir'l in yer dat ever I see,' sezee, ' en ef Brer Tukkey Buzzard wuz 'roun', he'd be mighty glad fer ter git 'im,' sezee. " ' How Mr. Buzzard gwine ter git 'im ? ' sez de Buzzard, sezee. " ' Well, dars a little hole roun' on the udder side er de tree,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ' en ef Brer Tukkey Buzzard wuz here, so he could take up his stan' dar,' sezee, ' I'd drive dat squir'l out,' sezee. '* ' Drive 'im out, den,' sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee, ' en I'll see dat Brer Tukkey Buzzard gits 'im,' sezee. ** Den Brer Rabbit kick up a racket, like he wer' drivin' sum- 'in' out, en Mr. Buzzard he rush 'roun' fer ter ketch de squir'l, en Brer Rabbit he dash out, he did, en he des fly fer home." At this point Uncle Remus took one of the tea-cakes, held his head back, opened his mouth, dropped the cake in with a sudden motion, looked at the little boy with an expression of astonish- ment, and then closed his eyes and begun to chew, mumbling, as an accompaniment, the plaintive tune of " Don't you Grieve atter Me." The seance was over; but before the little boy went into the *' big house," Uncle Remus laid his rough hand tenderly on the child's shoulder, and remarked, in a confidential tone: " Honey, you mus' git up soon Chris'mus mawnin' en open de do'; kase I'm gwineter bounce in on Marse John en Miss Sally en holler Chris'mus gif des like I useter endurin' de fahmin' days fo' de war, w'en ole Miss wuz 'live. I boun' dey don't fergit de ole nigger, nudder. W'en you hear me callin' de pigs, honey, you des hop up en onfassen de do'. I lay I'll give Marse John wunner deze yer 'sprize parties." HOW I EDITED AN A GRICUL TURAL PAPER. 69 ^ HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER, BY MARK TWAIN. I DID not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I accepted the terms he offered, and took his place. The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the week with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with some solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice. As I left the office, toward sun- down, a group of men and boys at the foot of the stairs dispersed with one impulse, and gave me passage-way, and I heard one or two of them say, "That's him!" I was naturally pleased by this incident. The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals standing here and there in the street, and over the way, watching me with interest. The group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say, " Look at his eye !" I pretended not to observe the notice I was attracting, but secretly I was pleased with it, and was purposing to write an account of it to my aunt. I went up a short flight of stairs, and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door, which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking men, whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then they both plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised. In about half an hour an old gentlemen, with a flowing beard and a fine but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He seemed to have something, on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on the floor, and got out of it a red silk hand- kerchief and a copy of our paper. He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his specta- cles with his handkerchief, he said, "Are you the new editor.'" I said I was. " Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before ?" "No," I said ; " this is my first attempt." 69S MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR. " Very likely. Have you had any experience in agriculture practically ?" < .< *. «. .< Their First Quarrel " " " " " Custom House Morals " " " " " Love's Young Dream ^^ A Chance Acquaintance. " " Kitty Answers " " " " " The Courtin' " Biglow Papers by J. R, Lowell. Birdofredom Sawin as a Volunteer " " " " " Birdofredum Sawin After the War " " " The Diamond Wedding " Poetical Works by E. C. Stedman. The Parson's Horse-Race. . . '• Oldtown Fireside Stories by Mrs. H. B. Stowe. Darius Green and his Fly- ing Machine " The Vagabond, and Other Poems by J. T. Trowbridge. A Fight with a Trout '^ In the Wilderness by C. D. Warner. Plumbers " My Summer in a Garden " " The Garden and its Ene- mies " " " " Boy the Destroyer " " " Brilliant Drunkards " Backlog Studies " " How 1 Killed a Bear '■'Inthc Wilderness " " Pie " Backlog Studies " " MR. W. A. PATON AND FRANCES E. LANIGAN. The Villager and the Snake, from World Fables by Geo. T. Lanlgan. The Grasshopper and the Ant " " " " " The Merchant OF Venice.... " " " " " The Good Samaritan " " " " " 7o6 CREDITS. The Centipede and the Bar- baric Yak from Werld Fables by Geo. T. Lanigan. The Kind-hearted She-Ele- phant " The Fox AND the Crow " " " " " The Ostrich and the Hen.. " " '• " " LEE & SHEPARD, BOSTON, MASS. The Female Base-Ball NiNE.from Life in Danbury . . . .by J. M. Bailey. An Italian's View of a New England Winter " " " " After the Funeral " " *' " What He Wanted it For.... " " " " T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, 306 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILA- DEEP HI A, PA. Christmas in Pineville from Major Jones's Court- skip by W. Tappan Thompson. A New Patent Medicine Op- eration " Doesticks's Letters " Q. K. Philander. Doesticks. Hans Breitmann's Party " Hans Breitmanri s Par- ly, and Other Ballads.hy Chas. G. Leland. Ballad OF the Rhine " " •' " " 'Tis Only my Husband " Charcoal Sketches by Joseph C. Neal . Simon Suggs gets a "Soft Snap " on His Daddy. " The Adventures of Capt. Siiiiott Suggs.. hy ]. T. Hooper. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 27 WEST 23D STREET, NEW YORK CITY. Rip Van Winkle from The Sketch-Book by Washington Irv- ing. The Family Horse " The Sparrowgrass Pa- pers by Fred'k S. Cozzens Getting A Glass of Water. . " " " " " Carrie's Comedy " Shooting Stars.. by W. L. Alden, The Belle OF Vallejo " " " " " Mr. Simpkins's Downfall " " " " " CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 743 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY. Frowenfeld's Clerk from The Grandissimes . ..by G. W. Cable. The Remarkable Wreck of THE Thomas Hyke " The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyke, and Other Stories. . .hyYvdink R. Stock- ton. A Victim of Hospitality '^ Up the River by F. W. Shelton. CREDITS. 707 TICKNOR & COMPANY, 211 TREMONT STREET, BOSTON, MASS. His First Day at Editing. . .from Culture's Garland. . .by Eugene Field. OoN Criteek DE Bernhardt. . " " " " The Peterkins Decide to Learn the Languages " The Peterkin Papers .hy Lucretia P. Hale CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO., 3 EAST 14TH ST., NEW YORK CITY. The Worst Man and the " Stupidest Man in Tv&.vlzy... bom Diversions of a Diplo- mat in Turkey by S. S. Cox. Fables of the Hodja " " '' . " " The Hodja's Donkey on his Veracity " " " The Hodja Marries " " " " " Examples OF Turkish Justice " " " " " MISCELLANEOUS CREDITS. The Robin and the Wood- pecker by Ambrose Bierce. The Dog AND THE Bees , " " The Ant and the Grain of " " Corn - " " The Nobleman and the Oys- ter " " The Camel and the Zebra " " The Boy AND THE Tortoise " " The First Piano in a Mining Camp from Short Stories by Sam Davis. The Haunted Room by R. J. Burdette. The Vacation of Mustapha '' " Wrecked in Port " She HAD to Take Her Things Along " " The Simple Story of George Washington The Donation Party The Type Writer Success with Small Fruits Legend of Mimir Train Manners The Romance of the Carpet " ' Jack Downing in Portland.. " Letters of Major Jack Downing. by Seba Smith. Uncle Joshua Downing in Boston " " " " Little Charles and the Fruit Anonymous. First-Class Snake Stories " A Quick Eye for Business " Butterwick's Little Gas Bill " The Old Settler by Ed. Mott. << (( (C ■*> ' ^^^' f ■ . t^; ... >' ri*^ A^ l^-^%¥ ^r^^-^^^-'-j^.^ S^^ ^:^.^^.^.% '^':*^;--''"^ V*;- '**^',si- :^r-^^'^^ .^v>i;7« %.^-,..s :#:;v^.,# .„ ^.-....ivs:'^. -^«i^.-. -*^.i'^. . -^^ ■ii^,.:;ii^ ■■^^^•^'^^'-^- ^ J^'*^ .•%: i(''f»i. ^^s ^^ i li^.^ u